
class: :: 

Book 



Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 



ITS SOURCE AND AIM 



A CONTRIBUTION TO THE SCIENCE AND 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, 



DANIEL G. BKJNTON, A.M., M.D. 

Member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Philological 
Society, etc. ; author of '■'■The Myths of the New World," etc. 




NEW YORK 
HENKY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1876. 







COPYEIGHT, 
BY HENRY HOLT, 

1876. 



Jjhn F. Trow & Son, Printers, 
205-213 East 12TH St., New York. 



PREFACE. 



Mythology, since it began to receive a scientific 
handling at all, has been treated as a subordinate 
branch of history or of ethnology. The " science of 
religion," as we know it in the works of Burnouf, 
Miiller, and others, is a comparison of systems of 
worship in their historic development. The deeper 
inquiry as to what in the mind of man gave birth to 
religion in any of its forms, what spirit breathed and 
is ever breathing life into these dry bones, this, the 
final and highest question of all, has had but passing 
or prejudiced attention. To its investigation this 
book is devoted. 

The analysis of the religious sentiment I offer is 
an inductive one, whose outlines were furnished by a 
preliminary study of the religions of the native race 
of America, a field selected as most favorable by rea- 
son of the simplicity of many of its cults, and the 
absence of theories respecting them. This study was 
embodied in " The Myths of the New World ; a 
Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the 
Red Race of America " (second edition, N. Y. 1876). 

The results thus obtained I have in the present 
work expanded by including in the survey the historic 
religions of the Old World, and submitted the whole 



iv PREFACE. 

for solution to the Laws of Mind, regarded as phys- 
iological elements of growth, and to the Laws of 
Thought, these, as formal only, being held as nowise 
a development of those. This latter position, which 
is not conceded by the reigning school of psychology, 
I have taken pains to explain and defend as far as 
consistent with the plan of this treatise ; but I am 
well aware that to say all that can be said in proof of 
it, would take much more space than here allowed. 

The main questions I have had before me in writ- 
ing this volume have an interest beyond those which 
mere science propounds. What led men to imagine 
gods at all ? What still prompts enlightened nations 
to worship ? Is prayer of any avail, or of none ? Is 
faith the last ground of adoration, or is reason? Is 
religion a transient phase of development, or is it 
the chief end of man ? What is its warrant of contin- 
uance ? If it overlive this day of crumbling theologies, 
whence will come its reprieve ? 

To such inquiries as these, answers satisfactory to 
thinking men of this time can, I believe, be given 
only by an inductive study of religions, supported by 
a sound psychology, and conducted in a spirit which 
acknowledges as possibly rightful, the reverence which 
every system claims. Those I propose, inadequate 
though they may be, can at any rate pretend to be 
the result of honest labor. 
Philadelphia, January, 1876. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE. 

The Bearing of the Laws of Mind on Religion. . 3 

CHAPTER II. 
The Emotional Elements of the Religious Sen- 
timent 47 

CHAPTER III. 

The Rational Postulates of the Religious Sen- 
timent 87 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Prayer and its Answer 117 

CHAPTER V. 
The Myth and the Mythical Cycles 155 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Cult, its Symbols and Rites 199 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Momenta of Religious Thought 231 



THE BEARING OF THE LAWS OF MIND 
ON RELIGION 



SUMMARY 



The distinction between the Science and the Philosophy of religion. It is 
assumed (1) tha: religious are products of thought, (2) that they have a uiuty 
of Mud and purpose. They can be studied by the methods of natural science 
applied to Mind. 

Mind is co-extensive with organism. Sensation and Emotion are prominent 
marks of it. These are either pleasurable or painful; the latter diminish 
vital motions, the former increase them. This is a product of natural selec- 
tion. A mis-reading of these facts is the fallacy of Buddhism and other 
pessimistic systems. Pleasure comes from continuous actiou. Tlus is 
illustrated by the esthetic emotions, volition and consciousness. 

The climax of mind is Intellect. Physical changes accompany thought 
but cannot measure it. Relations of thought and feeling. Truth is its only 
measure. Truth, like pleasure, is desired for its preservative powers. It is 
reached through the laws of thought. 

These laws are : (1) the natural order of the association of ideas, (2) the 
methods of applied logic, (3) the forms of correct reasoning. The last allow 
of mathematical expression. They are three in number, called those of 
Determination, Limitation and Excluded Middle. 

The las: is the key-stone of religious philosophy. Its diverse interpre- 
tations. Its mathematical expres ion shows tha: i: does not relate to con- 
tradictories. But certain concrete analytic propositions, relating to con- 
traries, do have this form. The contrary as distingui lied from t'.i^ privative. 
The Conditioned and Unconditioned, the Knowable and Unknowable are not 
true contradictions. The synthesis of contraries-is theoretic only. 

Errors as to the limits of possible explanation corrected by these 
distinctions. The formal law is the last and complete explanation. The 
relations of thought, belief and bting. 



THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT, 



CHAPTER I. 



THE BEARING OF THE LAWS OF MIND ON RELIGION. 

The Science of Religion is one of the branches 
of general historical science. It embraces, as 
the domain of its investigation, all recorded facts 
relating to the displays of the Religious Senti- 
ment. Its limits are defined by those facts, and 
the legitimate inferences from them. Its aim is 
to ascertain the constitutive laws of the origin 
and spread of religions, and to depict the influ- 
ence they have exerted on the general life of 
mankind. 

The question whether a given religion is 
true or false cannot present itself in this form as 
a proper subject of scientific inquiry. The most 
that can be asked is, whether some one system is 
best suited to a specified condition of the indi- 
vidual or the community. 

The higher inquiry is the object of the 



4 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Philosophy of Eeligion. This branch of study 
aims to pass beyond recorded facts and local 
adjustments in order to weigh the theoretical 
claims of religions, and measure their greater or 
less conformity with abstract truth. The formal 
or regulative laws of religious thought occupy it. 

Theology, dogmatic or polemic, is an ex- 
planatory defence of some particular faith. To- 
gether with mythology and symbolism, it fur- 
nishes the material from which the Science 
and Philosophy of Eeligion seek to educe the 
laws and frame the generalizations which will 
explain the source and aim of religion in gen- 
eral. 

The common source of all devotional displays 
is the Religious Sentiment, a complex feeling, a 
thorough understanding of which is an essential 
preliminary to the study of religious systems. 

Such a study proceeds on the assumption 
that all religions are products of thought, com- 
menced and continued in accordance with the 
laws of the human mind, and, therefore, compre- 
hensible to the extent to which these laws are 
known. No one disputes this, except in refer- 
ence to his own religion. This, he is apt to 
assert, had something " supernatural " about 
its origin. If this word be correctly used, it may 
stand without cavil. The " natural " is that of 
which we know in whole or in part the laws ; the 
" supernatural " means that of which we do not 



RELIGIONS ONE IN PURPOSE. 5 

at present know in any degree the laws. The 
domain of the supernatural diminishes in the 
ratio of the increase of knowledge ; and the 
inference that it also is absolutely under the 
control of law, is not only allowable but oblig- 
atory. 

A second assumption must be that there is a 
unity of kind and purpose in all religions. With- 
out this, no common law can exist for them. 
Such a law must hold good in all ages, in every 
condition of society, and in each instance. 
Hence those who explain religious systems as 
forms of government, or as systems of ethics, or 
as misconceived history, or as theories of natural 
philosophy, must be prepared to make their view 
good when it is universally applied, or else re- 
nounce the possibility of a Science of Religion ; 
while those who would except their own system 
from what they grant is the law of all others, 
violate the principles of investigation and thereby 
the canons of truth. 

The methods of science are everywhere alike. 
Has the naturalist to explain an organism, he 
begins with its elements or proximate principles 
as obtained by analysis ; he thence passes to the 
tissues and fluids which compose its members ; 
these he considers first in a state of repose, their 
structure and their connections ; then he ex- 
amines their functions, the laws of their growth 
and action; and finally he has recourse to the 



6 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

doctrine of relations, la theorie des milieux, to 
define the conditions of its existence. Were snch 
a method applied to a religion, it would lead us 
first to study its psychological elements, then the 
various expressions in word and act to which 
these give occasion, next the record of its growth 
and decay, and finally from these to gather the 
circumstantials of human life and culture which 
led to its historic existence. 

Some have urged that such a method should not 
be summoned to questions in mental philosophy. 
To do so, say they, is to confound things distinct, 
requiring distinct plans of study. Such a criti- 
cism might have had/weight in the days when the 
mind was supposed to inhabit the body as a 
tenant a house, and have no relation to it other 
than that of a casual occupant. But that opinion 
is antiquated. More than three-fourths of a cen- 
tury ago the far-seeing thinker, Wilhelm von 
Humboldt, laid down the maxim that the phe- 
nomena of mind and matter obey laws identical 
in kind ; x and a recent historian of science sums 
up the result of the latest research in these words : 

" The old dualism of mind and body, which for 
centuries struggled in vain for reconciliation, 
finds it now, not indeed in the unity of substance, 
but in the unity of laws." 2 

1 In his essay entitled, TJeber den G ' esclilechtsunters'hied und 
dessen Einfluss auf die organische Natur, first published in 1795. 

2 "D^r alte Dualisraus von Geist und Korper, der Jahrhun- 



THE GROWTH OF MIND. 7 

It is, therefore, as a question in mental phi- 
losophy to be treated by the methods of natural 
science, that I shall approach the discussion of 
the religious sentiment. As it is a part, or at 
least a manifestation of mind, I must preface 
its more particular consideration with some words 
on the mind in general, words which I shall make 
as few and as clear as possible. 

At the beginning of this century, the natur- 
alist Oken hazarded the assertion : u The human 
mind is a memberment of infusorial sensation," 1 
a phrase which has been the guiding principle of 
scientific psychology ever since. That in the 
course of this memberment or growth wholly 
new faculties are acquired, is conceded. As the 
union of two inorganic substances may yield a 
third different in every respect from either ; or, 
as in the transition of inorganic to organic mat- 
ter, the power of reproduction is attained ; so, . 
positively new powers may attend the develop- 
ment of mind. From sensations it progresses to 
emotions, from emotions to reason. The one is 
the psychical climax of the other. " We have 
still to do with the one mind, whose action devel- 

derte hindurch nach Versohnung gerungen, findet diese heute 
nicht zwar in der Einheit der Substanz, wohl aber in der 
Einheit des Gesetzes." Dr. Heinrich Boehmer, Gescluchte der 
Entwickelung der Naturwissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung in 
Deutschland, s. 201 (Goth a, 1872). 

1 Elements of Physio-Philosophy, §3589. Eng. trans., Lon- 
don, 1847. 



8 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

opes itself with perception, through discrimina- 
tion, till it arrives at notions, wherein its most 
general schejie, ' truth and error,' serves as the 
principle." l 

Extravagant as Oken's expression seemed to 
many when it was published, it now falls short 
of the legitimate demands of science, and I may 
add, of religion. Mind is co-extensive with 
organism ; . in the language of logic, one " con- 
notes " the other; this statement, and nothing 
short of it, satisfies the conditions of the problem. 
Wherever we see Form preserved amid the 
change of substance, there is mind ; it alone can 
work that miracle ; only it gives Life. Matter 
suffers no increase ; therefore the new is but a 
redistribution of the old ; it is new inform only ; 
and the maintenance of form under changes of 
substance is the one distinguishing mark of 
organism. To it is added the yet more wonder- 
ful power of transmitting form by reproduction. 
Wherever these are, are also the rudiments of 
mind. The distinction between the animal and 
the vegetable worlds, between the reasoning 
J and unreasoning animals, is one of degree only. 
Whether, in a somewhat different sense, we should 
not go yet further, and say that mind is co-ex- 
tensive with motion, and hence with phenomena, 
is a speculative inquiry which may have to be 

1 Von Feuchtersleben, The Principles of Medical Psychology, 
p. 130 (Eng. trans., London, 1847). 



WIIA T SENSA TWN IS. 9 

answered in the affirmative, but it does not concern 
us here. 

The first and most general mark of Mind is 
sensation or common feeling. In technical lan- 
guage a sensation is defined to be the result 
of an impression on an organism, producing 
some molecular change in its nerve or life cen- 
tres. It is the consequence of a contact with 
another existence. Measured by its effects upon 
the individual the common law of sensation is : 
Every impression, however slight, either adds to 
or takes from the sum of the life-force of the 
system ; in the former case it produces a pleas- 
urable, in the latter a painful sensation. The 
exceptions to this rule, though many, are such in 
appearance only. 1 

In the human race the impression can often 
be made quite as forcibly by a thought as by an 
act. "I am confident," says John Hunter, the 
anatomist, " that I can fix my attention to any 

1 " The fundamental property of organic structure is to 
seek what is beneficial, and to shun what is hurtful to it." Dr. 
Henry Maudsley, Body and Mind, p. 22. 

" The most essential nature of a sentient being is to move to 
pleasure and from pain." A. Bain, On the Study of Character, 
p. 292 (London, 1861). 

" States of Pleasure are connected with an increase, states of 
Pain with an abatement of some or all of the vital functions." 
A. Bain, Mind and Body, p. 59. 

" Affectus estconfusa idea, qua. Mens majorem, vel minorem 
sui corporis, vel alicujus ejus partis, existendi vim affirmat." 
Spinoza, Ethices, Lib. III. adfnem. 



10 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

part, until I have a sensation in that part." 
This is what is called the influence of the mind 
upon the hody. Its extent is much greater 
than used to be imagined, and it has been a 
fertile source of religious delusions. Such sen- 
sations are called subjective; those produced by 
external force, objective. 

The immediate consequent of a sensation is 
reflex action, the object of which is either to 
avoid pain or increase pleasure, in other words, 
either to preserve or augment the individual 
life. 

The molecular changes incident to a sensa- 
tion leave permanent traces, which are the 
physical bases of memory. One or several such 
remembered sensations, evoked by a present 
sensation, combine with it to form an Emotion. 
Characteristic of their origin is it that the emo- 
tions fall naturally into a dual classification, in 
which the one involves pleasurable or elevating, 
the other painful or depressing conditions. 
Thus we have the pairs joy and grief, hope and 
fear, love and hate, etc. 

The question of pleasure and pain is thus 
seen to be the primary one of mental science. 
We must look to it to explain the meaning of 
sensation as a common quality of organism. 
What is the significance of pleasure and pain ? 

The question involves that of Life. Not to 
stray into foreign topics, it may broadly be said 



THE MEANING OF PAIN. 11 

that as all change resolves itself into motion, 
and, as Helmholtz remarks, all science merges 
itself into mechanics, we should commence by 
asking what vital motions these sensations stand 
for or correspond to. 

Every organism, and each of its parts, is the 
resultant of innumerable motions, a composition 
of forces. As such, each obeys the first law of 
motion, to wit, indefinite continuance of action 
until interfered with. This is a modification of 
Newton's " law of continuance," which, with 
the other primary laws of motion, must be taken 
as the foundation of biology as well as of astron- 
omy. 1 

The diminution or dispersion of organic mo- 
tion is expressed in physiological terms &§ waste ; 
we are admonished of waste by pain ; and thus 
admonished we supply the waste or avoid the 
injury as far as we can. But this connection of 
pain with waste is not a necessary one, nor is it 
the work of a Procidentia particularism as the 

1 The extension of the mechanical laws of motion to organic 
motion was, I believe, first carried cut by Comte. His 
biological form of the first law is as follows : " Tout etat, statique 
ou dynamique, tend a pcrsister spontanement, sans aucune 
alteration, en resistant aux perturbations exterieures." 
Systeme de Politique Positive, Tome iv. p. 178. The metaphysi- 
cal ground of this law has, I think, been very well shown by 
Schopenhauer to be in the Kantian principle that time is not 
a force, nor a quality of matter, but a condition of perception, 
and hence it can exert no physical influence. See Schopen- 
hauer, Parerga und. Paralipomena, Bi. II, s. 37. 



VI THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

schoolmen said. It is a simple result of natural 
selection. Many organisms have been born, no 
doubt, in which waste did not cause pain ; caused, 
perhaps, pleasure. Consequently, they indulged 
their preferences and soon perished. Only those 
lived to propagate their kind in whom a differ- 
ent sensation was associated with waste, and they 
transmitted this sensitiveness increased by an- 
cestral impression to their offspring. The curses 
of the human race to-day are alcohol, opium and 
tobacco, and they are so because they cause 
waste, but do not immediately produce painful 
but rather pleasurable feelings. 

Pain, as the sensation of waste, is the precur- 
sor of death, of the part or system. By parity 
of evolution, pleasure came to be the sensation 
of continuance, of uninterrupted action, of in- 
creasing vigor and life. Every action, however, 
is accompanied by waste, and hence every pleas- 
ure developes pain. But it is all important to 
note that the latter is the mental correlative not 
of the action but of its cessation, not of the life 
of the part but of its ceasing to live. Pain, it is 
true, in certain limits excites to action ; but it is 
by awakening the self-preservative tendencies, 
which are the real actors. This physiological 
distinction, capable of illustration from sensitive 
vegetable as well as the lowest animal organisms, 
has had an intimate connection with religious 
theories. The problems of suffering and death 



THE FALLACY OF PESSIMISM. 13 

are precisely the ones which all religions set 
forth to solve in theory and in practice. Their 
creeds and myths are based on what they make 
of pain. The theory of Buddhism, which now 
has more followers than any other faith, is 
founded on four axioms, which are called " the 
four excellent truths." The first and fundamen- 
tal one is : u Pain is inseparable from exist- 
ence." This is the principle of all pessimism, 
ancient and modern. Schopenhauer, an out-and- 
out pessimist, lays down the allied maxim, " All 
pleasure is negative, that is, it consists in getting 
rid of a want or pain," 1 a principle expressed 
before his time in the saying " the highest pleas- 
ure is the relief from pain." 

Consistently with this, Buddhism holds out as 
the ultimate of hope the state of Nirvana, in 
which existence is not, where the soul is " blown 
out " like the flame of a candle. 

But physiology demolishes the corner-stone 
of this edifice when it shows that pain, so far 
from being inseparable from existence, has merely 
become, through transmitted experience, nearly 
inseparable from the progressive cessation of 
existence. While action and reaction are equal 
in inorganic nature, the principle of life modifies 
the operation of this universal law of force by 

1 " Aller Genuss, seiner Natur nach, ist negativ,d. h., in Be- 
freiung von einer Noth oder Pein besteht. ' ' Parerga unci Para- 
lipomena. Bd. II. s. 482. 



14 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

bringing in nutrition, which, were it complete, 
would antagonize reaction. In snch a case, 
pleasure would be continuous, pain null ; action 
constant, reaction hypothetical. As, however, 
nutrition in fact never wholly and at once re- 
places the elements altered by vital action, both 
physicians and metaphysicians have observed 
that pleasure is the fore-runner of pain, and has 
the latter as its certain sequel. 1 

Physiologically and practically, the definition 
of pleasure is, maximum action vjith minimum 
waste. 

This latter generalization is the explanation 
of the esthetic emotions. The modern theory of 
art rests not on a psychological but a physiolog- 
ical, and this in turn on a physical basis. Hehn- 
holtz's theory of musical harmony depends on the 
experimental fact that a continued impression 
gives a pleasant, a discontinuous an unpleasant 
sensation. The mechanics of muscular structure 
prove that what are called graceful motions are 

1 "Xo impression whatever is pleasant beyond the instant of 
its realization ; since, at that very instant, commences the 
change of susceptibility, which suggests the desire for a change 
of impression or for a renewal of that impression which is fad- 
ing away." Dr. J. P. Catlow, The Principles of Aesthetic Medi- 
cine, p 155 (London, 1867). 

" Dum re, quern appetamus fruimur. corpus ex ea fruitione 
novam acquirat constitutionem, a qua aliter determinatur, et 
arise reruni imagines in eo excitantur," etc. Spinoza, Ethices, 
Pars III, Prop. lix. 



PLEASURE IS ACTION. 15 

those which are the mechanical resultant of the 
force of the muscle, — those which it can perform 
at least waste. The pleasure we take in curves, 
especially " the line of beauty," is because our 
eyes can follow them with a minimum action of 
its muscles of attachment. The popular figure 
called the Grecian figure or the walls of Troy, 
is pleasant because each straight line is shorter, 
and at right angles to the preceding one, thus 
giving the greatest possible change of action to 
the muscles of the eye. 

Such a mechanical view of physiology pre- 
sents other suggestions. The laws of vibratory 
motion lead to the inference that action in ac- 
cordance with those laws gives maximum inten- 
sity and minimum waste. Hence the pleasure the 
mind takes in harmonies of sound, of color and 
of odors. 

The correct physiological conception of the 
most perfect physical life is that which will con- 
tinue the longest in use, not that which can dis- 
play the greatest muscular force. The ideal is 
one of extension, not of intension. 

Religious art indicates the gradual recogni- 
tion of these principles. True to their ideal of 
inaction, the Oriental nations represent their 
gods as mighty in stature, with prominent 
muscles, but sitting or reclining, often with 
closed eyes or folded hands, wrapped in robes, and 
lost in meditation. The Greeks, on the other 



16 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

hand, portrayed their deities of ordinary stature, 
naked, awake and erect, but the limbs smooth and 
round, the muscular lines and the veins hardly 
visible, so that in every attitude an indefinite 
sense of repose pervades the whole figure. 
Movement without effort, action without waste, 
is the immortality these incomparable works set 
forth. They are meant to teach that the ideal 
life is one, not of painless ease, but of joyous 
action. 

The law of continuity to which I have allud- 
ed is not confined to simple motions. It is a 
general mathematical law, that the longer 
anything lasts the longer it is likely to last. If 
a die turns ace a dozen times handrunning, 
the chances are large that it will turn ace again. 
The Theory of Probabilities is founded upon 
this, and the value of statistics is based on an 
allied principle. Every condition opposes change 
through inertia. By this law, as the motion 
caused by a pleasurable sensation excites by 
the physical laws of associated motions the 
reminiscences of former pleasures and pains, 
a tendency to permanence is acquired, which 
gives the physical basis for Yolition. Expe- 
rience and memory are, therefore, necessary 
to volition, and practically self restraint is 
secured by calling numerous past sensations 
to mind, deterrent ones, " the pains which are 
indirect pleasures," or else pleasurable ones. 



LIFE THE AIM OF A CTION. 17 

The Will is an exhibition under complex rela- 
tions of the tendency to continuance which is 
expressed in the first law of motion. Its nor- 
mal action is the maintenance of the individual 
life, the prolongation of the pleasurable sen- 
sations, the support of the forces which combat 
death. 

Whatever the action, whether conscious or 
reflex, its real though often indirect and unac- 
complished object is the preservation or the 
augmentation of the individual life. Such is the 
dictum of natural science, and it coincides sin- 
gularly with the famous maxim of Spinoza : 
Unaquaeque res, quantum in se est, in suo esse 
perseverare conatur. 

The consciousness which accompanies voli- 
tional action is derived from the common feel- 
ing which an organism has, as the result of all its 
parts deriving their nutrition from the same 
centre. Eising into the sphere of emotions, this 
at first muscular sensation becomes " self-feel- 
ing." The Individual is another name for the 
boundaries of reflex action. 

Through memory and consciousness we reach 
that function of the mind called the intellect or 
reason, the product of which is thought. Its 
physical accompaniments are chemical action, 
and an increase of temperature in the brain. 
But the sum of the physical forces thus evolved 

is not the measure of the results of intellectual 

2 



18 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

action. These differ from other forms of force 
in being incommensurate with extension. They 
cannot be appraised in units of quantity, but 
in quality only. The chemico- vital forces by 
which a thought rises into consciousness bear 
not the slightest relation to the value of the 
thought itself. It is here as in those ancient 
myths where an earthly maiden brings forth a 
god. The power of the thought is dependent 
on another test than physical force, to wit, its 
truth. This is measured by its conformity to 
the laws of right reasoning, laws clearly ascer- 
tained, which are the common basis of all 
science, and to which it is the special province 
of the science of logic to give formal expression. 
Physical force itself, in whatever form it ap- 
pears, is only known to us as feeling or as 
thought ; these alone we know to be real ; all 
else is at least less real.* Not only is this true 
of the external world^ but also of that assumed 
something, the reason, the soul, the ego, or the 
intellect. For the sake of convenience these 
words may be used ; but it is well to know that 

lu Feeling and thought are much more real than anything 
else ; they are the only things which we directly know to be real." 
— John Stuart Mill. — Theis?n,-p. 20"2. How very remote ex- 
ternal objects are from what we take them to be, is constantly 
shown in physiological studies. As Helmholtz remarks : " Xo 
kind and no degree of similarity exists between the quality of 
a sensation, and the quality of the agent inducing it and por- 
trayed by it." — Lectures on Scientific Subjects, p. 390. 



INTELLECT EXCLUDES EMOTION. 19 

this introduction of something that thinks, back 
of thought itself, is a mere figure of speech. 
We say, "/think," as if the "I" was some- 
thing else than the thinking. At most, it is but 
the relation of the thoughts. Pushed further, 
it becomes the limitation of thought by sensa- 
tion, the higher by the lower. The Cartesian 
maxim, cogito ergo sum, has perpetuated this 
error, and the modern philosophy of the ego 
and non-ego has prevented its detection. A 
false reading of self-consciousness led to this 
assumption of " a thinking mind." Our person- 
ality is but the perception of the solidarity of 
our thoughts and feelings ; it is itself a thought. 

These three manifestations of mind — sensa- 
tions, emotions and thoughts — are mutually ex- 
clusive in their tendencies. The patient forgets 
the fear of the result in the pain of the opera- 
tion; in intense thought the pulse falls, the 
senses do not respond, emotions and action are 
absent. We may say that ideally the unim- 
peded exercise of the intellect forbids either 
sensation or emotion. 

Contrasting sensation and emotion, on the one 
side, with intellect on the other, feeling with 
thought, they are seen to be polar or antithet- 
ical manifestations of mind. Each requires the 
other for its existence, yet in such wise that the 
one is developed at the expense of the other. 
The one waxes as the other wanes. This is seen 



20 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

to advantage when their most similar elements 
are compared. Thus consciousness in sensation 
is keenest when impressions are strongest ; but 
this consciousness is a bar to intellectual self- 
consciousness, as was pointed out by Professor 
Ferrier in his general Law of consciousness. 1 
When emotion and sensation are at their min- 
imum, one is most conscious of the solidarity of 
one's thoughts ; and just in proportion to the viv- 
idness of self-consciousness is thought lucid and 
strong. In an ideal intelligence, self-conscious- 
ness would be infinite, sensation infinitesimal. 

Yet there is a parallelism between feeling 
and thought, as well as a contrast. As pain and 
pleasure indicate opposite tendencies in the forces 
which guide sensation and emotion, so do the 
true and the untrue direct thought, and bear the 
same relation to it. For as pain is the warning 
of death, so the untrue is the detrimental, the 
destructive. The man who reasons falsely, will 
act unwisely and run into danger thereby. To 
know the truth is to be ready for the worst. 
Who reasons correctly will live the longest. To 
love pleasure is not more in the grain of man 
than to desire truth. " I have known many," 
says St. Augustine, " who like to deceive ; to be 
deceived, none." Pleasure, joy, truth, are the 
respective measures of life in sensation, emotion, 
intellect ; one or the other of these every organ- 

1 The Philosophy of Consciousness, p. 72. 



WHAT IS TRUTH? 21 

ism seeks with all its might, its choice depend- 
ing on which of these divisions of mind is prom- 
inently its own. As the last mentioned is the 
climax, truth presents itself as in some way the 
perfect expression of life. 

We have seen what pleasure is, but what is 
truth ? The question of Pilate remains, not 
indeed unanswered, but answered vaguely and 
discrepancy. 1 We may pass it by as one of 
speculative interest merely, and turn our atten- 
tion to its practical paraphrase, what is true ? 

The rules of evidence as regards events are 
well known, and also the principles of reaching 
the laws of phenomena by inductive methods. 
Many say that the mind can go no further than 
this, that the truth thus reached, if not the 
highest, is at least the highest for man. It is at 
best relative, but it is real. The correctness of 
this statement may be tested by analyzing the 
processes by which we acquire knowledge. 

Knowledge reaches the mind in two forms, for 
which there are in most languages, though not in 

1 The Gospel of John (ch. xviii.) leaves the impression 
that Pilate either did not wait for an answer but asked the 
question in contempt, as Bacon understood, or else that waiting 
he received no answer. The Gospel of Nicodemus, however, 
written according to Tischendorf in the second century, proba- 
bly from tradition , gives the rest of the conversation as follows : 
"Pilate says to him: What is truth? Jesus says: Truth is 
from heaven. Pilate says : Is not there truth upon earth ? 
Jesus says to Pilate: See how one who speaks truth is judged 
by those who have power upon earth'" Teh. iii.] 



22 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

modern English, two distinct expressions, connai- 
tre and savoir, kennen and wissen. The former 
relates to knowledge through sensation, the latter 
through intellection ; the former cannot be 
rendered in words, the latter can be ; the for- 
mer is reached through immediate perception, 
the latter through logical processes. For exam- 
ple : an odor is something we may certainly 
know and can identify, but we cannot possibly 
describe it in words ; justice on the other hand may 
be clearly defined to our mind, but it is equally 
impossible to translate it into sensation. Never- 
theless, it is generally agreed that the one of 
these processes is, so far as it goes, as conclusive 
as the other, and that they proceed on essen- 
tially the same principles. 1 Religious phi- 
losophy has to do only with the second form 
of knowledge, that reached through notions or 
thoughts. 

The enchainment or sequence of thoughts in 
the mind is at first an accidental one. They 
arise through the two general relations of near- 
ness in time or similarity in sensation. Their 
succession is prescribed by these conditions, and 
without conscious effort cannot be changed. 
They are notions about phenomena only, and 
hence are infinitely more likely to be wrong 

1 The most acute recent discussion of this subject is by 
Helmholtz,in his essay entitled, " Recent Progress in the Theory 
of Vision." 



HOW LOGIC WAS BEACHED. 23 

than right. Of the innumerable associations of 
thought possible, only one can yield the truth. 
The beneficial effects of this one were felt, and 
thus by experience man slowly came to distin- 
guish the true as what is good for him, the un- 
true as what is injurious. 

After he had done this for a while, he at- 
tempted to find out some plan in accordance with 
which he could so arrange his thoughts that they 
should always produce this desirable result. He 
was thus led to establish the rules for right rea- 
soning, which are now familiarly known as Logic. 
This science was long looked upon as a completed 
one, and at the commencement of this century 
we find such a thinker as Coleridge expressing an 
opinion that further development in it was not 
to be expected. Since then it has, however, 
taken a fresh start, and by its growth has laid 
the foundation for a system of metaphysics which 
will be free from the vagaries and unrealities 
which have thrown general discredit on the name 
of philosophy. 

In one direction, as applied logic and the 
logic of induction, the natural associations of ideas 
have been thoroughly studied, and the methods 
by which they can be controlled and reduced 
have been taught with eminent success. In this 
branch, Bentham, Mill, Bain, and others have been 
prominent workers. 

Dealing mainly with the subjects and materials 



24 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

of reasoning, with thoughts rather than with 
thinking, these writers, with the tendency of 
specialists, have not appreciated the labors of an- 
other school of logicians, who have made the in- 
vestigation of the process of thinking itself their 
especial province. This is abstract logic, or pure 
loo-ic, sometimes called, inasmuch as it deals with 
forms only, " formal logic," or because it deals 
with names and not things, " the logic of names." 
It dates its rise as an independent science from 
the discovery of what is known as. "the quan- 
tification of the predicate," claimed by Sir 
William Hamilton. Of writers upon it may be 
mentioned Professor De Morgan, W. Stanley 
Jevons, and especially Professor George Boole of 
Belfast. The latter, one of the subtlest thinkers 
of this age, and eminent as a mathematician, 
succeeded in making an ultimate analysis of the 
laws of thinking, and in giving them a symbolic 
notation, by which not only the truth of a simple 
proposition but the relative degree of truth in 
complex propositions may be accurately esti- 
mated. 1 



1 George Boole, Professor of Mathematics in Queen's Col- 
lege, Cork, was born Nov.- 2, 1815, died Dec. 8, 1864. He was 
the author of several contributions to the higher mathematics, 
but his principal production is entitled: An Investigation intb^ 
tlte Laws of Thought, on which are founded the mathematical Theo- 
ries of Logic and Probabilities [London, 1854.] Though the re- 
putation he gained was so limited that one may seek his name 
in vain in the New American Cyclopedia [1875] ? or the Diction- 



PROFESSOR BOOLE'S DISCOVERIES. 25 

This lie did by showing that the laws of cor- 
rect thinking can be expressed in algebraic nota- 
tion, and, thus expressed, will be subject to all 
the mathematical laws of an algebra whose sym- 
bols bear the uniform value of unity or nought 
(1 or 0) — a limitation required by the fact that 
pure logic deals in notions of quality only, not of 
quantity. 

This mathematical form of logic was foreseen 
by Kant when he declared that all mathematical 
reasoning derives its validity from the logical 
laws ; but no one before Professor Boole iiad 
succeeded in reaching the notation which sub- 
ordinated these two divisions of abstract thought 
to the same formal types. His labors have not 
yet borne fruit in proportion to their value, and 
they are, I believe, comparatively little known. 
But in the future they will be regarded as 
epochal in the science of mind. They make us to 
see the same law governing mind and matter, 
thought and extension. 

Not the least important result thus achieved 



naive des Contemporains [1859], the few who can appreciate his 
treatise place the very highest estimate upon it. Professor 
Todhunter, in the preface to his History of the Theory of Proba- 
bilities, calls it " a marvellous work," and in similar language 
Professor W. Stanley Jevons speaks of it as " one of the most 
marvellous and admirable pieces of reasoning ever put together" 
(Pure Logic, p. 75), Professor Bain, who gives a synopsis of it 
in his Deductive Logic , wholly misapprehends the author's pur- 
pose, and is unable to appraise justly his conclusions. 



26 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

was in emphasizing the contrast between the 
natural laws of mental association, and the laws 
of thinking which .are the foundation of the syl- 
logism. 

By attending to this distinction we are ena- 
bled to keep the form and the matter of thought 
well apart — a neglect to do which, or rather a 
studied attempt to ignore which, is the radical 
error of the logic devised by Hegel, as I shall 
show more fully a little later. 

All applied logic, inductive as well as deduc- 
tive, is based on formal logic, and this in turn 
on the " laws of thought," or rather of thinking. 
These are strictly regulative or abstract, and dif- 
fer altogether from the natural laws of thought, 
such as those of similarity, contiguity and har- 
mony, as well as from the rules of applied logic, 
such as those of agreement and difference. The 
fundamental laws of thinking are three in num- 
ber, and their bearing on all the higher questions 
of religious philosophy is so immediate that their 
consideration becomes of the last moment in such 
a study as this. They are called the laws of 
Determination, Limitation and Excluded Middle. 

The first affirms that every object thought 
about must be conceived as itself, and not as 
some other thing. " 4- is A," or " x = «," is its 
formal expression. This teaches us that what- 
ever we think of, must be thought as one or a 
unity. It is important, however, to note that 



THE LAWS OF THOUGHT. 27 

this does not mean a mathematical unit, but a 
logical one, that is, identity and not contrast. 
So true is this that in mathematical logic the 
only value which can satisfy the formula is a 
concept which does not admit of increase, to 
wit, a Universal. 

From this necessity of conceiving a thought 
under unity has arisen the interesting tendency, 
so frequently observable even in early times, to 
speak of the universe as one whole, the to xav 
of the Greek philosophers ; and also the mono- 
theistic leaning of all thinkers, no matter what 
their creed, who have attained very general con- 
ceptions. Furthermore, the strong liability of 
confounding this speculative or logical unity 
with the concrete notion of individuality, or 
mathematical unity, has been, as I shall show 
hereafter, a fruitful source of error in both re- 
ligious and metaphysical theories. Pure logic 
deals with quality only, not with quantity. 

The second law is that of Limitation. As 
the first is sometimes called that of Affirmation, 
so this is called that of Negation. It prescribes 
that a thing is not that which it is not. Its 
formula is, a A is not not- A." If this seems 
trivial, it is because it is so familiar. 

These two laws are two aspects of the same 
law. The old maxim is, omnis determinatio 
est negatio; a quality can rise into cognition 
only by being limited by that which it is not. 



28 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

It is not a comparison of two thoughts, how- 
ever, nor does it limit the quality itself. For 
the negative is not a thought, and the quality is 
not in suo genere finita y to use an expression of 
the old logicians ; it is limited not by itself but 
by that which it is not. These are not idle dis- 
tinctions, as will soon appear. 

The third law comes into play when two 
thoughts are associated and compared. There 
is qualitative identity, or there is not. A is 
either B or not B. An animal is either a man 
or not a man. There is no middle class between 
the two to which it can be assigned. Superficial 
truism as this appears, we have now come upon 
the very battle ground of the philosophies. 
This is the famous " Law of the contradictories 
and excluded middle," on the construction of 
which the whole fabric of religious dogma, and 
I may add of the higher metaphysics, must de- 
pend. " One of the principal retarding causes 
of philosophy," remarks Professor Ferrier, " has 
been the want of a clear and developed doctrine 
of the contradictory." 1 The want is as old as 
the days of Heraclitus of Ephesus, and lent to 
his subtle paradoxes that obscurity which has not 
yet been wholly removed. 

Founding his arguments on one construction 
of this law, expressed in the maxim, " The con- 

i The Institutes of Metaphysic, p. 459, (2nd edition.) 



THE LA W OF EXCLUDED MIDDLE. 29 

ceivable lies between two contradictory extremes," 
Sir William Hamilton defended with his wide 
learning those theories of the Conditioned and 
the Unconditioned, the Knowable and Unknow- 
able, which banish religion from the realm of 
reason and knowledge to that of faith, and cleave 
an impassable chasm between the human and 
the divine intelligence. From this unfavorable 
ground his orthodox followers, Mansel and Moz- 
ley, defended with ability but poor success their 
Christianity against Herbert Spencer and his 
disciples, who also accepted the same theories, 
but followed them out to their legitimate con- 
clusion — a substantially atheistic one. 

Hamilton in this was himself but a follower 
of Kant, who brought this law to support his 
celebrated " antinomies of the human under- 
standing," warnings set up to all metaphysical 
explorers to keep off of holy ground. 

On another construction of it, one which 
sought to escape the dilemma of the contradict- 
ories by confining them to matters of the under- 
standing, Hegel and Schelling believed they had 
gained the open field. They taught that in 
the highest domain of thought, there where it 
deals with questions of pure reason, the unity 
and limits which must be observed in matters of 
the understanding and which give validity to 
this third law, do not obtain. This view has 
been closely criticized, and, I think, with justice. 



30 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Pretending to deal with matters of pnre reason, 
it constantly though surreptitiously proceeds 
on the methods of applied logic ; its conclusions 
are as fallacious logically as they are experiment- 
ally. The laws of thought are formal, and are as 
binding in transcendental subjects as in those 
which concern phenomena. 

The real bearing of this law can, it appears 
to me, best be derived from a study of its math- 
ematical expression. This is, according to the 
notation of Professor Boole, x 2 =x. As such, it 
presents a fundamental equation of thought, and 
it is because it is of the second degree that we 
classify in pairs or opposites. This equation 
can only be satisfied by assigning to x the value 
of 1 or 0. The " universal type of form" is there- 
fore x (1 — x)=0. 

This algebraic notation shows that there is, 
not two, but only one thought in the antithesis ; 
that it is made up of a thought and its expressed 
limit ; and, therefore, that the so-called " law 
of contradictories" does not concern contradic- 
tories at all, in pure logic. This result was seen, 
though not clearly, by Dr. Thompson, who in- 
dicated the proper relation of the members of 
the formula as a positive and a privative. He, 
however, retained Hamilton's doctrine that 
" privative conceptions enter into and assist the 
higher processes of the reason in all that it can 
know of the absolute and infinite ; " that we must, 



LOGICAL FALLACIES. 31 

" from the seen realize an unseen world, not by 
extending to the latter the properties of the for- 
mer, but by assigning to it attributes entirely 
opposite." x 

The error that vitiates all such reasoning is 
the assumption that the privative is an inde- 
pendent thought, that a thought and its limita- 
tion are two thoughts ; whereas they are but the 
two aspects of the one thought, like two sides to 
the one disc, and the absurdity of speaking of 
them as separate thoughts is as great as to speak 
of a curve seen from its concavity as a different 
thing from the same curve regarded from its 
convexity. The privative can help us nowhere 
and to nothing ; the positive only can assist our 
reasoning. 

This elevation of the privative into a con- 
trary, or a contradictory, has been the bane of 
metaphysical reasoning. From it has arisen the 
doctrine of the synthesis of an affirmative and a 
negative into a higher conception, reconciling 
them both. This is the maxim of the Hegelian 
logic, which starts from the synthesis of Being 
and Not-being into the Becoming, a very ancient 
doctrine, long since offered as an explanation of 
certain phenomena, which I shall now touch 
upon. 

A thought and its privative alone — that is, a 

1 An Outline of the Necessary Laws of Thought, p. 113 (New 
York, 1860). 



32 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

quality and its negative — cannot lead to a more 
comprehensive thought. It is devoid of relation 
and barren. In pure logic this is always the 
case, and must be so. In concrete thought it 
may be otherwise. There are certain proposi- 
tions in which the negative is a reciprocal qual- 
ity, quite as positive as that which it is set over 
against. The members of such a proposition are 
what are called " true contraries." To what- 
ever they apply as qualities, they leave no mid- 
dle ground. If a thing is not one of them, it is 
the other. There is no third possibility. An 
object is either reel or not red ; if not red, it 
may be one of many colors. But if we say that 
all laws are either concrete or abstract, then we 
know that a law not concrete has all the proper- 
ties of one which is abstract. We must examine, 
then, this third law of thought in its applied 
forms in order to understand its correct use. 

It will be observed that there is an assump- 
tion of space or time in many propositions hav- 
ing the form of the excluded middle. They are 
only true under given conditions. " All gold is 
fusible or not," means that some is fusible at 
the time. If all gold be already fused, it does 
not hold good. This distinction was noted by 
Kant in his discrimination between synthetic 
judgments, which assume other conditions ; and 
analytic judgments, which look only at the mem- 
bers of the proposition. 



ON " TRUE CONTRARIES." 33 

Only the latter satisfy the formal law, for 
the proposition must not look outside of itself 
for its completion. Most analytic propositions 
cannot extend our knowledge beyond their 
immediate statement. If A is either B or not 
B, and it is shown not to be B, it is left uncertain 
what A may be. The class of propositions re- 
ferred to clo more than this, inasmuch as they pre- 
sent alternative conceptions, mutually exhaust- 
ive, each the privative of the other. Of these 
two contraries, the one always evokes the other ; 
neither can be thought except in relation to the 
other. They do not arise from the dichotomic 
process of classification, but from the polar 
relations of things. Their relation is not in the 
mind but in themselves, a real externality. 
The distinction between such as spring from the 
former and the latter is the most important ques- 
tion in philosophy. 

To illustrate by examples, we familiarly speak 
of heat and cold, and to say a body is not hot is 
as much a.s to say it is cold. But every physicist 
knows that cold is merely a diminution of heat, 
not a distinct form of force. The absolute zero 
may be reached by the abstraction of all heat, 
and then the cold cannot increase. So, life and 
death are not true contraries, for the latter is 
not anything real but a mere privative, a quan- 
titative diminution of the former, growing less 
to an absolute zero where it is wholly lost. 



34 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Thus it is easy to see that the Unconditioned 
exists only as a part of the idea of the Con- 
ditioned, the Unknowable as the foil of the 
"Knowable ; and the erecting of these mere 
privatives, these negatives, these shadows, into 
substances and realities, and then setting them 
up as impassable barriers to human thought, is 
one of the worst pieces of work that metaphysics 
has been guilty of. 

The like does not hold in true contrasts. 
Each of them has an existence as a positive, and 
is never lost in a zero of the other. The one is 
always thought in relation to the other. Ex- 
amples of these are subject and object, absolute 
and relative, mind and matter, person and con- 
sciousness, time and space. When any one of 
these is thought, the other is assumed. It is 
vain to attempt their separation. Thus those 
philosophers who assert that all knowledge is 
relative, are forced to maintain this assertion, to 
wit, All knowledge is relative, is nevertheless 
absolute, and thus they falsify their own posi- 
tion. So also, those others who say all mind is 
a property of matter, assume in this sentence 
the reality of an idea apart from matter. Some 
have argued that space and time can be 
conceived independently of each other ; but 
their experiments to show it do not bear repe- 
tition. 

All true contraries are universals. A uni- 



EXAMPLES OF TRUE CONTRARIES. 35 

versal concept is one of " maximum extension," 
as logicians say, that is, it is without limit. The 
logical limitation of such a universal is not its 
negation, but its contrary, which is itself also a 
universal. The synthesis of the two can be in 
theory only, yet yields a real product. To 
illustrate this by a geometrical example, a 
straight line produced indefinitely is, logically 
considered, a universal. Its antithesis or true 
contrary is not a crooked line, as might be 
supposed, but the straight line which runs at 
right angles to it. Their synthesis is not the 
line which bisects their angle but that formed 
by these contraries continually uniting, that is, 
the arc of a circle, the genesis of which is theo- 
retically the union of two such lines. Again, 
time can only be measured by space, space by 
time ; they are true universals and contraries ; 
their synthesis is motion, a conception which re- 
quires them both and is completed by them. Or 
again, the philosophical extremes of downright 
materialism and idealism are each wholly true, 
yet but half the truth. The insoluble enigmas 
that either meets in standing alone are kindred 
to those which puzzled the old philosophers in 
the sophisms relating to motion, as, for instance, 
that as a body cannot move where it is and still 
less where it is not, therefore it cannot move at 
all. Motion must recognise both time and space 
to be comprehensible. As a true contrary 



36 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

constantly implies the existence of its opposite, 
we cannot take a step in right reasoning without 
a full recognition of both. 

This relation of contraries to the higher 
conception which logically must include them 
is one of the well-worn problems of the higher 
metaphysics. 

The proper explanation would seem to be. as 
suggested above, that the synthesis of contraries 
is capable of formal expression only, but not of 
interpretation. In pursuing the search for their 
union we pass into a realm of thought not unlike 
that of the mathematician when he deals with 
hypothetical quantities, those which can only 
be expressed in symbols — . v ^~ for example, 
— but uses them to good purpose in reaching 
real results. The law does not fail, but its 
operations can no longer be expressed under 
material images. Thev are svmbolic and for 
speculative thought alone, though pregnant with 
practical applications. 

As I have hinted, in all real contraries it 
is theoretically possible to accept either the one 
or the other. As in mathematics, all motion can 
be expressed either under formulae of initial 
motion (mechanics) . or of continuous motion 
(kinematics ), or as all force can be express- 
ed as either static or as dynamic force ; in 
either case the other form assuming a merely 
hypothetical or negative position ; so the logic 



THE BEING AND NOT-BEING. 37 

of quality is competent to represent all existence 
as ideal or as material, all truth as absolute or 
all as relative, or even to express the universe 
in formulae of being or of not-being. This per- 
haps was what Heraclitus meant when he pro- 
pounded his dark saying : " All things are and 
are not." He added that " All is not," is truer 
than " All is." Previous to his day, Buddha 
Sakyamuni had said : " He who has risen to the 
perception of the not-Being, to the Unconditioned, 
the Universal, his path is difficult to understand, 
like the flight of birds in the air." 1 Perhaps 
even he learned his lore from some older song 
of the Veda, one of which ends, " Thus have the 
sages, meditating in their souls, explained away 
the fetters of being by the not-being." 2 The 
not-being, as alone free from space and time, 
impressed these sages as the more real of the 
two, the only absolute. 

The error of assigning to the one universal a 
preponderance over the other arose from the 
easy confusion of pure with applied thought. 
The synthesis of contraries exists in the formal 
law alone, and this is difficult to keep before the 
mind. In concrete displays they are forever 
incommensurate. One seems to exclude the 
other. To see them correctly Ave must there 
treat them as alternates. We may be competent, 

1 The Dhamapada, verse 93. 

2 Koppen, Der Buddhismus, s. 30. 



38 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

for instance, to explain all phenomena of mind 
by organic processes ; and equally competent to 
explain all organism as effects of mind ; but we 
must never suppose an immediate identity of the 
two ; this is only to be found in the formal law 
common to both ; still less should we deny the 
reality of either. Each exhausts the universe ; 
but at every step each presupposes the other ; 
their synthesis is life, a concept hopelessly puz- 
zling unless regarded in all its possible displays 
as made up of both. 

This indicates also the limits of explanation. 
By no means every man's reason knows when it 
has had enough. The less it is developed, the 
further is it from such knowledge. This is plain- 
ly seen in children, who often do not rest satis- 
fied with a really satisfactory explanation. It is 
of first importance to be able to recognize what 
is a good reason. 

I may first say what it is not. It is not a cause. 
This is nothing more than a prior arrangement 
of the effect ; the reason for an occurrence is 
never assigned by showing its cause. Nor is it a 
caprice, that is, motiveless volition, or will as a 
motor. In this sense, the "will of God " is no 
good reason for an occurrence. Nor is it fate, 
or physical necessity. This is denying there is 
any explanation to give. 

The reason can only be satisfied with an 
aliment consubstantial with itself. Nothing 



WHAT IS A GOOD REASON. 39 

material like cause, nor anything incomprehen- 
sible like caprice, meets its demands. Reason is 
allied to order, system and purpose above all 
things. That which most completely answers to 
these will alone satisfy its requirements. They 
are for an ideal, of order. Their complete satis- 
faction is obtained in universal types and meas- 
ures, pure abstractions, which are not and can- 
not be real. The formal law is the limit of 
explanation of phenomena, beyond which a 
sound intellect will ask nothing. It fulfils all 
the requirements of reason, and leaves nothing 
to be desired. 

Those philosophers, such as Herbert Spencer, 
who teach that there is some incogitable 
"nature" of something which is the immanent 
" cause " of phenomena, delude themselves with 
words. The history and the laws of a phenom- 
enon are its nature, and there is no chimerical 
something beyond them. They are exhaustive. 
They fully answer the question why, as well as 
the question hoio. 1 

1 Spencer in assuming an " unknowable universal causal 
agent and source of things," as "the nature of the power 
manifested in phenomena," and in calling this the idea com- 
mon to both religion and " ideal science," fell far behind 
Comte, who expressed the immovable position, not only of 
positive science but of all intelligence, in these words : " Le 
veritable esprit positif consiste surtout a substituer toujours 
l'etude des lois invariables des phenomenes a celles de leurs causes 
proprement dites, premieres ou finales, enun mot la determina- 



40 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

For it is important to note that the word 
" law " is not here used in the sense which 
Blackstone gives to it, a " rule of conduct ; " 
nor yet in that which science assigns to it, a 
" physical necessity." Law in its highest sense 
is the type or form, perceived by reason as that 
toward which phenomena tend, but which they 
always fail to reach. It was shown by Kant 
that all physical laws depend for their validity 
on logical laws. These are not authoritative, like 
the former, but purposive only. But their pur- 
pose is clear, to wit, the attainment of propor- 
tion, consistency or truth. As this purpose is 
reached only in the abstract form, this alone 
gives us the absolutely true in which reason can 
rest. 

In the concrete, matter shows the law in its 
efforts toward form, mind in its struggle for the 
true. The former is guided by physical force, 
and the extinction of the aberrant. The latter, 
in its highest exhibition in a conscious intelli- 
gence, can alone guide itself by the representa- 
tion of law, by the sense of Duty. Such an 
intelligence has both the faculty to see and the 
power to choose and appropriate to its own be- 

tion du comment a celle du pourquoi.^ '—Systemede Politique Posi- 
tive, i. p. 47. Compare Spencer's Essay entitled, " Reasons 
for dissenting from Comte." The purposive law is the only 
final cause which reason allows. Comte's error lay in ignoring 
this class of laws . 



"THE THINGS ETERNAL." 41 

hoof, and thus to build itself up out of those 
truths which are " from everlasting unto ever- 
lasting." 

A purely formal truth of this kind as some- 
thing wholly apart from phenomena, not in any 
way connected with the knowledge derived 
through the senses, does not admit of doubt and 
can never be changed by future conquests of the 
reasoning powers. We may rest upon it as 
something more permanent than matter, greater 
than Nature. 

Such was the vision that inspired the noble 
lines of Wordsworth : — 

" What are things eternal? — Powers depart, 
Possessions vanish, and opinions change, 
And passions hoJd a fluctuating seat; 
But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken, 
And subject neither to eclipse nor wane, 
Duty exists ; immutably survive 
For our support, the measures and the forms 
Which an abstract intelligence supplies ; 
Whose kingdom is where time and space are not." 

There is no danger that we shall not know 
what is thus true when we see it. The sane 
reason cannot reject it. " The true," says 
Novalis, " is that which we. cannot help believ- 
ing." It is the perceptio per solam essentiam 
of Spinoza. It asks not faith nor yet testi- 
mony ; it stands in need of neither. 

Mathematical truth is of this nature. We 



42 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

cannot ; if we try, believe that twice two is five. 
Hence the unceasing effort of all science is to 
give its results mathematical expression. Such 
truth so informs itself with will that once re- 
ceived, it is never thereafter alienated ; obedi- 
ence to it does not impair freedom. Necessity 
and servitude do not arise from correct rea- 
soning;, but through the limitation of fallacies. 
They have nothing to do with 

1 ' Those transcendent truths 
Of the pure intellect, that stand as laws 
Even to Thy Being's infinite majesty." 

It is not derogatory, but on the contrary 
essential to the conception of the Supreme 
Eeason, the Divine Logos, to contemplate its 
will as in accord and one with the forms of abstract 
truth. " The c will of God ' : " says Spinoza, " is 
the refuge of ignorance ; the true Will is the 
spirit of right reasoning." 

This identification of the forms of thought 
with the Absolute is almost as old as philosophy 
itself. The objections to it have been that no in- 
dependent existence attaches to these forms ; 
that they prescribe the conditions of thought but 
are not thought itself, still less being ; that they 
hold good to thought as known to man's reason, 
but perchance not to thought in other intelli- 
gences ; and, therefore, that even if through the 
dialectical development of thought a consistent 



THOUGHT AND BEING. 43 

idea of the universe were framed, that is, one 
wherein every fact was referred to its appropriate 
law, still would remain the inquiry, Is this the 
last and absolute truth ? 

The principal points in these objections are 
that abstract thought does not postulate being ; 
and that possibly all intelligence is not one in 
kind. To the former objection the most satis- 
factory reply has been offered by Professor J. F. 
Ferrier. He has shown that the conception of 
object, even ideal object, implies the conception 
of self in the subject ; and upon this proposition 
which has been fully recognized even by those 
who differ from him widely, he grounds ■ the ex- 
istence of Supreme Thought as a logical unity. 
Those who would pursue this branch of the sub- 
ject further, I would refer to his singularly able 
work. 1 

The latter consideration will come up v in a 
later chapter. If it be shown that all possible 
intelligence proceeds on the same laws as that of 
man, and that the essence of this is activity, per- 
manence, or truth — synonymous terms — then 
the limitation of time ceases, and existence not 
in time but without regard to time, is a neces- 
sary consequence. Knowledge through intellec- 
tion can alone reach a truth independent of time ; 
that through sensation is always relative, true 

i The Institutes of Metaphysic, 2d Ed. See also Bain, The 
Emotions and the Will, the closing note. 



41 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT., 

for the time only. The former cannot be ex- 
pressed without the implication of the concep- 
tions of the universal and the eternal as " domi- 
nant among the subjects of thought with which 
Logic is concerned;" 1 and hence the relation 
which the intellect bears to the absolute is a real 
and positive one. 

1 Boole, Laws of Thought, p. 401. 



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE 
RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 



SUMMARY. 



* The Religious Sentiment is made up of emotions and thoughts. The 
emotions are historically first and most prominent. Of all concerned, Fear 
is the most obvious. Hope is its correlate. Both suppose Experience, and a 
desire to repeat or avoid it. Hence a "Wish is the source of both emotions, 
and the proximate element of religion. The significance of desire as the 
postulate of development. The influence of fear and hope. The conditions 
which encourage them. 

The success of desire fails to gratify the religious sentiment. The alter- 
native left is eternal repose, or else action, unending yet -which aims at 
nothing beyond. The latter is reached through Love. The result of love 
is continuance. Illustrations of this. Sexual love and the venereal sense in 
religions. The hermaphrodite gods. The virgin mother. Mohammed was 
the first to proclaim a deity above sex. The conversion of sexual and religious 
emotion exemplified from insane delusions. The element of fascination. The 
love of God. Other emotional elements in religions. 

The religious wish defined to be one whose fruition depends upon unknown 
power. To be religious, one must desire and be ignorant. The unknown 
power is of religious interest only in so far as it is believed to be in relation 
to men's desires. In what sense ignorance is the mother of devotion. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS 
SENTIMENT. 

The discussion in the last chapter illustrated 
how closely pain and pleasure, truth and error, 
and thought and its laws have been related to 
the forms of religions, and their dogmatic ex- 
pressions. The character of the relatively and 
absolutely true was touched upon, and the latter, 
it was indicated, if attainable at all by human in- 
telligence, must be found in the formal laws of 
that intelligence, those which constitute its na- 
ture and essence, and in the conclusions which 
such a premise forces upon the reason. The 
necessity of this preliminary inquiry arose from 
the fact that every historical religion claims the 
monopoly of the absolutely true, and such claims 
can be tested only when we have decided as to 
whether there is such truth, and if there is, where 
it is to be sought. Moreover, as religions arise 
from some mental demand, the different mani- 
festations of mind, — sensation, emotion and intel- 
lect — must be recognized and understood. 

Passing now to a particular description of the 



48 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Eeligious Sentiment, it may roughly be defined 
to be the feeling which prompts to thoughts or 
acts of worship. It is, as I have said, a complex 
product, made up of emotions and ideas, develop- 
ing with the growth of mind, wide-reaching in 
its maturity, but meagre enough at the start. 
We need not expect to find in its simplest phases 
that insight and tender feeling which we attrib- 
ute to the developed religious character. " The 
scent of the blossom is not in the bulb." Its 
early and ruder forms, however, will best teach 
the mental elements which are at its root. 

The problem is, to find out why the primitive 
man figured to himself any gods at all; what 
necessity of his nature or his condition led him 
so universally to assume their existence, and seek 
their aid or their mercy ? The conditions of the 
solution are, that it hold good everj^where and 
at all times ; that it enable us to trace in every 
creed and cult the same sentiments which first 
impelled man to seek a god and adore him. 
Why is it that now and in remotest history, here 
V and in the uttermost regions, there is and always 
has been this that we call religion f There must 
be some common reason, some universal pecu- 
liarity in man's mental formation which prompts, 
which forces him, him alone of animals, and him 
without exception, to this discourse and observ- 
ance of religion. What this is, it is my present 
purpose to try to find out. 



RELIGION AS A MATTER OF EMOTION. 49 

In speaking of the development of mind 
through organism, it was seen that the emotions 
precede the reason in point of time. This is 
daily confirmed by observation. The child is 
vastly more emotional than the man, the savage 
than his civilized neighbor. Castren, the Rus- 
sian traveller, describes the Tartars and Lapps 
as a most nervous folk. When one shocks them 
with a sudden noise, they almost fall into con- 
vulsions. Among the North American Indians, 
falsely called a phlegmatic race, nervous diseases 
are epidemic to an almost unparalleled extent. 
Intense thought, on the other hand, as I have 
before said, tends to lessen and annul the emo- 
tions. Intellectual self-consciousness is adverse 
to them. 

But religion, we are everywhere told, is 
largely a matter of the emotions. The pulpit 
constantly resounds with appeals to the feelings, 
and not unfrequently with warnings against the 
intellect. " I acknowledge myself," says the 
pious non- juror, William Law, " a declared en- 
^my to the use of reason in religion; " and he 
often repeats his condemnation of " the labors 
learned professors of far-fetched book-riches." 1 
As the eye is the organ of sight, says one whose 
thoughts on such matters equal in depth those 
of Pascal, so the heart is the organ of religion. 2 

1 Address to the Clergy, pp. 42, 43, 67, 108, etc. 

2 E. von Hardenberg [Novalis], Werke, s. 364. 



50 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

In popular physiology, the heart is the seat of 
the emotions as the brain is that of intellect. It 
is appropriate, therefore, that we commence our 
analysis of the religious sentiment with the emo- 
tions which form such a prominent part of it. 

Now, whether we take the experience of an 
individual or the history of a tribe, whether we 
have recourse to the opinions of religious teach- 
ers or irreligious philosophers, we find them 
nigh unanimous that the emotion which is the 
/ prime motor of religious thought is fear. I need 
not depend upon the well-known line of Petro- 
nius Arbiter, 

Primus in orbe deos fecit timor ; 

for there is plenty of less heterodox authority. 
The worthy Bishop Hall says, " Seldom doth 
God seize upon the heart without a vehement 
concussion goinp; before. There must be some 
blustering and flashes of the law. We cannot be 
too awful in our fear." x Bunyan, in his beautiful 
allegory of the religious life, lets Christian ex- 
claim : " Had even Obstinate himself felt what I 
have felt of the terrors of the yet unseen, he 
would not thus lightly have given us the bach'' 
The very word for God in the Semitic tongues 
means "fear;" 2 Jacob swore to Laban, "by 

1 Treatises Devotional and Practical, p. 188. London, 1836. 

2 In Aramaic dachla means either a god or fear. The Arabic 
Allah and the IJebrew Eloaji are by some traced to a common 



ON HOPE AND FEAR. 51 

Him whom Isaac feared;" and Moses warned 
his people that " God is come, that his fear may 
be before your faces." To venerate is from a 
Sanscrit root (sev), to be afraid of. 

But it is needless to amass more evidence 
on this point. Few will question that fear is the 
most prominent emotion at the awakening of 
the religious sentiments. Let us rather pro- 
ceed to inquire more minutely what fear is. 

I remarked in the previous chapter that " the 
emotions fall naturally into a dual classification, 
in which the one involves pleasurable or elevat- 
ing, the other painful or depressing conditions." 
Fear comes of course under the latter category, 
as it is essentially a painful and depressing state 
of mind. But it corresponds with and implies 
the presence of Hope, for he who has nothing to 
hope has nothing to fear. 1 " There is no hope 
without fear, as there is no fear without hope," 
says Spinoza. " For he who is in fear has some 
doubt whether what he fears will take place, 
and consequently hopes that it will not." 

We can go a step further, and say that in 
the mental process the hope must necessarily 
precede the fear. In the immediate moment of 
losing a pleasurable sensation we hope and seek 

root, signifying to tremble, to show fear, though the more usual 
derivation is from one meaning to be strong. 

1 " Wen die Hoffnung, den hat auch die Furcht verlassen." 
Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga und ParaUpnmena. Bd. ii. s. 474. 



52 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

for its repetition. The mind, untutored by ex- 
perience, confidently looks for its return. The 
hope only becomes dashed by fear when expe- 
rience has been associated with disappointment. 
Hence we must first look to enjoy a good before we 
can be troubled by a fear that we shall not enjoy 
it ; we must first lay a plan before we can fear 
its failure. In modern Christianity hope, hope 
of immortal happiness, is more conspicuous than 
fear ; but that hope is also based on the picture 
of a pleasant life made up from experience. 

Both hope and fear, therefore, have been 
correctly called secondary or derived emotions, as 
they presuppose experience and belief, expe- 
rience of a pleasure akin to that which we hope, 
belief that we can attain such a pleasure. " We 
do not hope first and enjoy afterwards, but we 
enjoy first and hope afterwards." * Having en- 
joyed, we seek to do so again. A desire, in other 
words, must precede either Hope or Fear. They 
are twin sisters, born of a Wish. 

Thus my analysis traces the real source of 
the religious sentiment, so far as the emotions 
are concerned, to a Wish ; and having arrived 
there, I find myself anticipated by the words of 
one of the most reflective minds of this century : 



1 Alexander Bain, On the Study of Character, p. 128. See 
also his remarks in his work, The Emotions and the Will, p. 84, 
and in his notes to James Mill's Analysis of the Mind, vol. i.,pp. 
124-125. 



THE MEANING OF DESIRE. 53 

" All religion rests on a mental want ; we hope, 
we fear, because we wish." 1 And long before 
this conclusion was reached by philosophers, it 
had been expressed in unconscious religious 
thought in myths, in the Valkyria, the Wish- 
maidens, for instance, who carried the decrees of 
Odin to earth. 

This is no mean origin, for a wish, a desire, 
conscious or unconscious, in sensation only or in 
emotion as well, is the fundamental postulate 
of every sort of development, of improvement, 
of any possible future, of life of any kind., 
mental or physical. In its broadest meaning, 
science and history endorse the exclamation of 
the unhappy Obermann : " La perte vraiment 
irreparable est celle des desirs." 2 

The sense of unrest, the ceaseless longing 
for something else, which is the general source 
of all desires and wishes, is also the source of 
all endeavor and of all progress. Physiolog- 
ically, it is the effort of our organization to adapt 
itself to the ever varying conditions which sur- 
round it; intellectually, it is the struggle to 
arrive at truth ; in both, it is the effort to attain 
a fuller life. 

As stimuli to action, therefore, the com- 
monest and strongest of all emotions are Fear 

1 Wilhelm von Humboldt's Gesammelte Werhe, Bd. vii., S. 
62. 

2 De Senancourt, Obermann, Lettre xli. 



5 1 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

and Hope. The}^ are the emotional correlates of 
pleasure and pain, which rule the life of sen- 
sation. Their closer consideration may well 
detain ns awhile. 

In the early stages of religious life, whether 
in an individual or a nation, the latter is half 
concealed. Fear is more demonstrative, and as 
it is essentially destructive, its effects are more 
sudden and visible . In its acuter forms, as Fright 
and Terror, it may blanch the hair in a night, 
blight the mind and destroy the life of the in- 
dividual. As Panic, it is eminently epidemic, 
carrying crowds and armies before it ; while hi 
the aggravated form of Despair it swallows up 
all other emotions and prompts to self destruc- 
tion. Its physiological effect is a direct impair- 
ment of vitality. 

Hope is less intense and more lasting than 
fear. It stimulates the system, elates with the 
confidence of control, strengthens with the 
courage derived from a conviction cl success, 
and bestows in advance the imagined joy of 
possession. As Feuchtersleben happily expresses 
it : " Hope preserves the principle of duration 
when other parts are threatened with destruc- 
tion, and is a manifestation of the innermost 
psychical energy of Life." 1 

Both emotions powerfully prompt to action, 

1 Elements of Medical Psychology, p. 331. 



INCENTIVES TO FEAR. 55 

and to that extent are opposed to thought. 
Based on belief, they banish uncertainty, and 
antagonize doubt and with it investigation. The 
religion in which they enter as the principal 
factors will be one intolerant of opposition, 
energetic in deed, and generally hostile to an 
unbiased pursuit of the truth. 

Naturally those temperaments and those 
physical conditions which chiefly foster these 
emotions will tend to religious systems in which 
they are prominent. Let us see what some of 
these conditions are. 

It has always been noticed that impaired 
vitality predisposes to fear. The sick and feeble 
are more timorous than the strong and well. 
Further predisposing causes of the same nature 
are insufficient nourishment, cold, gloom, mala- 
ria, advancing age and mental worry. For this 
reason nearly invariably after a general financial 
collapse we witness a religious " revival." Age, 
full of care and fear, is thus prompted to piety, 
willing, as La Rochefoucauld remarks, to do 
good by precept when it can no longer do evil 
by example. The inhabitants of swampy, fever- 
ridden districts are usually devout. The female 
sex, always the w r eaker and often the worsted 
one in the struggle for existence, is when free 
more religious than the male ; but with them 
hope is more commonly the incentive than 
fear. 



53 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Although thus prominent and powerful, 
desire, so far as its fruition is pleasure, has 
expressed but the lowest emotions of the re- 
ligious sentiment. Something more than this 
has always been asked by sensitively religious 
minds. Success fails to bring the gratification 
it promises. The wish granted, the mind turns 
from it in satiety. Not this, after all, was what 
we sought. 

The acutest thinkers have felt this. Pascal in 
his Pensees has such expressions as these : "The 
present is never our aim. The future alone is 
our object." " Forever getting ready to be 
happy, it is certain we never can be." " 'Tis 
the combat pleases us and not the victory. As 
soon as that is achieved, we have had enough 
of the spectacle. So it is in play, so it is in the 
search for truth. We never pursue objects, but 
we pursue the pursuit of objects." But no one 
has stated it more boldly than Lessing wdien he 
wrote : " If God held in his right hand all truth, 
and in his left the one unceasingly active desire 
for truth, although bound up with the law that I 
should forever err, I should choose with humility 
the left and say : ' Give me this, Father. The 
pure truth is for thee alone.' " l The pleasure 
seems to lie not in the booty but in the battle, 
not in gaining the stakes but in playing the 

iLessing's Gesammelte Werke. B. ii. s. 443 (Leipzig, 1855). 



REST FOR THE WEARY. 57 

game, not in the winning but in the wooing, not 
in the discovery of truth but in the search for it. 

What is left for the wise, but to turn, as does 
the preacher, from this delusion of living, where 
laughter is mad and pleasure is vain, and praise 
the dead which are dead more than the living 
which are yet alive, or to esteem as better than 
both he that hath never been ? 

Such is the conclusion of many faiths. 
Wasted with combat, the mortal longs for the 
rest prepared for the weary. Buddha taught 
the extinguishment in Nirvana; the Brahman 
portrays the highest bliss as shanti, complete and 
eternal repose ; and that the same longing was 
familiar to ancient Judaism, and has always been 
common to Christianity, numerous evidences 
testify. 1 Few epitaphs are more common than 
those which speak of the mortal resting in pace, 
in quiet e. 

The supposition at the root of these longings 
is that action must bring fatigue and pain, and 
though it bring pleasure too, it is bought too 
dearly. True in fact, I have shown that this 
conflicts with the theory of perfect life, even 
organic life. The highest form of life is the 
most unceasing living ; its functions ask for their 

i See Exodus, xxiii. 12; Psalms, lv. 6; Isaiah, xxx. 15 ; 
Jeremiah, vi. 16 ; Hebrews, v. 9. So St. Augustine : " et nos 
post opera nostra sabbato vitse eternse requiescamus in te." 
Confessionum Lib. xiii. cap. 36. 



53 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

completest well being constant action, not satis- 
faction. That general feeling of health and 
strength, that sens de bien etre, which goes with 
the most perfect physical life, is experienced only 
when all the organs are in complete working order 
and doing full duty. They impart to the whole 
frame a desire of motion. Hence the activity 
of the young and healthy as contrasted with the 
inertness of the exhausted and aged. 

How is it possible to reconcile this ideal of 
life, still more the hope of everlasting life, with 
the acknowledged vanity of desire ? It is ac- 
complished through the medium of an emotion 
which more than any I have touched upon 
reveals the character of the religious sentiment 
— Love. This mighty but protean feeling I 
shall attempt to define on broader principles 
than has hitherto been done. The vague and 
partial meanings assigned it have led to sad con- 
fusion in the studies of religions. In the lan- 
guage of feeling, love is a passion ; but it does 
not spring from feeling alone. It is far more 
fervid when it rises through intellect than 
through sense. "Men have died from time 
to time, and worms have eaten them, but not 
for love," says the fair Eosalincl ; and though 
her saying is not very true as to the love of 
sense, it is far less true as to the love of intel- - 
lect. The martyrs to science and religion, to 
principles and faith, multiply a hundred-fold 



WHEREIN ALL LOVE IS ONE. 59 

those to the garden god. The spell of the idea 
is what 

" Turns ruin into laughter and death into dreaming." 

Such love destroys the baser passion of sense, or 
transfigures it so that we know it no longer. 
The idea-driven is callous to the blandishments 
of beauty, for his is a love stronger than the love 
to woman. The vestal, the virgin, the eunuch 
forlhe kingdom of heaven's sake are the exemp- 
lars of the love to God. 

What common trait so marks these warring 
products of mind, that we call them by one 
name ? In what is all love the same ? The 
question is pertinent, for the love of woman, 
the love of neighbor, the love of country, the 
love of God, have made the positive side of 
most religions, the burden of their teachings. 
The priests of Cotytto and Venus, Astarte and 
Melitta, spoke but a more sensuous version of 
the sermon of the aged apostle to the Ephesians, 
— shortest and best of all sermons — "Little 
children, love one another." 3 

The earliest and most constant sign of reason 
is "working for a remote object." 2 Nearly 
everything we do is as a step to something be- 
yond. Forethought, conscious provision, is the 

1 " Filioli, diligite alterutrum." This is the " testamentum 
Johannis," as recorded from tradition by St. Jerome in his 
notes to the Epistle to the Galatians. 

a Alexander Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, Chap. I. 



GO THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

measure of intelligence. But there must be 
something which is the object, the aim, the end- 
in- view of rational action, which is sought for 
itself alone, not as instrumental to something 
else. Such an object, when recognized, inspires 
the sentiment of love. It springs from the sat- 
isfaction of reason. 

This conclusion as to the nature of love has 
long been recognized by thinkers. Richard 
Baxter defined it as " the volition of the end," 
" the motion of the soul that tendeth to the end," 
and more minutely, " the will's volition of good 
apprehended by the understanding." 1 In simi- 
lar language Bishop Butler explains it as " the 
resting in an object as an end." 2 Perhaps I 
can better these explanations by the phrase, 
Love is the mental impression of rational action 
whose end is in itself. 

Now this satisfaction is found only in one 
class of efforts, namely, those whose result is 
continuity, persistence, in fine, preservation. 
This may be toward the individual, self-love, 
whose object is the continuance of personal ex- 
istence ; toward the other sex, where the hidden 
aim is the perpetuation of the race; toward 



ij. Christian Directory. Parti. Chap. III. 

2 ' ' The very nature of affection, the idea itself, necessarily 
implies resting in its object as an end." Fifteen Sermons ly 
Joseph Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham, Preface, and p. 147 
(London, 1841). 



LOVE THE BURDEN OF RELIGION. 61 

one's fellows, where the giving of pleasure and 
the prevention of pain mean the maintenance of 
life ; toward one's country, as patriotism ; and 
finally toward the eternally true, which as alone 
the absolutely permanent and preservative, in- 
spires a love adequate and exhaustive of its 
conception, casting out both hope and fear, the 
pangs of desire as well as the satiety of fruition. 

In one or other of these forms love has at all 
times been the burden of religion : the glad tid- 
ings it has always borne have been "love on 
earth." The Phoenix in Egyptian myth appeared 
yearly as newly risen, but was ever the same bird, 
and bore the egg from which its parent was to 
have birth. So religions have assumed the 
guise in turn of self-love, sex-love, love of 
country and love of humanity, cherishing in each 
the germ of that highest love which alone is 
the parent of its last and only perfect embodi- 
ment. 

Favorite of these forms was sex-love. " We 
find," observes a recent writer, "that all relig- 
ions have engaged and concerned themselves 
with the sexual passion. From the times of 
phallic worship through Romish celibacy down 
to Mormonism, theology has linked itself with 
man's reproductive instincts." * The remark 
is just, and is most conspicuously correct in 

i Dr. J. Milner Fothergill, Journal of Mental Science, Oct, 
1874, p. 198. 



62 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

strongly emotional temperaments. " The de- 
votional feelings," writes the Rev. Frederick 
Robertson in one of his essays, " are often singu- 
larly allied to the animal nature ; they conduct 
the unconscious victim of feelings that appear 
divine into a state of life at which the world 
stands aghast." Fanaticism is always united 
with either excessive lewdness or desperate 
asceticism. The physiological performance of 
the- generative function is sure to be attacked by 
religious bigotry. 

So prominent is this feature that attempts 
have been made to explain nearly all symbolism 
and mythology as types of the generative pro- 
cedure and the reproductive faculty of organ- 
ism. Not only the pyramids and sacred moun- 
tains, the obelisks of the Nile and the myths of 
light have received this interpretation, but even 
such general symbols as the spires of churches, the 
oross of Christendom and the crescent of Islam. 1 

Without falling into the error of supposing that 
any one meaning or origin can be assigned such 
frequent symbols, we may acknowledge that love, 
in its philosophical sense, is closely akin to the 
mystery of every religion. That, on occasions, 
love of sex gained the mastery over all other 
forms, is not to be doubted ; but that at all times 

1 The most recent work on the topic is that of Messrs. 
Westropp and Wake, The Influence of the Phallic Idea on the 
Religions of Antiquity, London, 1874. 



THE GBOWTH OF SEX-LOVE. G3 

this was so, is a narrow, erroneous view, not con- 
sistent with a knowledge of the history of psy- 
chical development. 

Sex-love, as a sentiment, is a cultivated growth. 
All it is at first is a rude satisfaction of the ere- 
thism. The wild tribes of California had their 
pairing seasons when the sexes were in heat, "as 
regularly as the deer r the elk and the antelope." * 
In most tongues of the savages of North Amer- 
ica there are no tender words, as "clear," "darling," 
and the like. 2 No desire of offspring led to 
their unions. The women had few children, and 
their fathers paid them little attention. The 
family instinct appears in conditions of higher 
culture, in Judea, Greece, Rome and ancient Ger- 
many. Procreation instead of lust was there the 
aim of marriage. To-day, mere sentiment is so 
much in the ascendant that both these elements 
are often absent. There is warm affection with- 
out even instinctive knowledge of the design of 
the bond assumed. 3 

Those who would confine the promptings of 
the passion of reproduction as it appears in man 
to its objects as shown in lower animals, know 

1 Schoolcraft's History and Statistics of the Indian Tribes,Yol. 
iv.p. 224. 

2 Richardson, Arctic Expedition, p. 412. 

3 Most physicians have occasion to notice the almost entire 
loss in modern life of the instinctive knowledge of the sex rela- 
tion. Sir James Paget has latelv treated of the subject in one 
of his Clinical Lectures (London, 1875). 



64 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

little how this wondrous emotion has acted as 
man's mentor as well as paraclete in his long 
and toilsome conflict with the physical forces. 

The venereal sense is unlike the other special 
senses in that it is general, as well as referable to 
special organs and nerves. In its psychological 
action it " especially contributes to the develop- 
ment of sympathies which connect man not only 
with his coevals, but with his fellows of all pre- 
ceding and succeeding generations as well. 
Upon it is erected this vast superstructure of in- 
tellect, of social and moral sentiment, of volun- 
tary effort and endeavor." 1 Of all the properties 
of organized matter, that of transmitting form 
and life is the most wonderful ; and if we ex- 
amine critically the physical basis of the labors 
and hopes of mankind, if we ask what prompts 
its noblest and holiest longings, we shall find 
them, in the vast majority of instances, directly 
traceable to this power. No wonder then that re- 
ligion, which we have seen springs from man's 
wants and -wishes, very often bears the distinct 
trace of their origin in his reproductive func- 
tions. The liens of the family are justly deemed 
sacred, and are naturally associated with what- 
ever the mind considers holy. 

The duty of a citizen to become a father was 

i Dr. J. P. Catlow, Principles of Aesthetic Medicine, p. 112. 
This thoughtful though obscure writer has received little recog- 
nition even in the circle of professional readers. 



THE EPICENE G ODS . 65 

a prominent feature in many ancient religions. 
How much honor the sire of many sons had in 
Rome and Palestine is familiar to all readers. No 
warrior, according to German faith, could gain en- 
trance to Valhalla unless he had begotten a son. 
Thus the preservation of the species was placed 
under the immediate guardianship of religion. 

Such considerations explain the close connec- 
tion of sexual thoughts with the most sacred 
mysteries of faith. In polytheisms, the divin- 
ities are universally represented as male or 
female, virile and fecund. The processes of 
nature were often held to be maintained through 
such celestial nuptials. 

Yet stranger myths followed those of the 
loves of the gods. Religion, as the sentiment of 
continuance, finding its highest expression in 
the phenomenon of generation, had to reconcile 
this with the growing concept of a divine unity. 
Each separate god was magnified in praises as 
self-sufficient. Earth, or nature, or the season 
is one, yet brings forth all. How embody this 
in concrete form ? 

The startling refuge was had in the image of 
a deity at once of both sexes. Such avowedly 
were Mithras, Janus, Melitta, Cybele, Aphrodite, 
Agdistis ; indeed nearly all the Syrian, Egyp- 
tian, and Italic gods, as well as Brahma, and, in 
the esoteric doctrine of the Cabala, even Jeho- 
vah, whose female aspect is represented by the 



66 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

"Shekinah." To this abnormal condition the 
learned have applied the adjectives epicene, an- 
drogynous, hermaphrodite, arrenothele. In art 
it is represented by a blending of the traits of 
both sexes. In the cult it was dramatically set 
forth by the votaries assuming the attire of the 
other sex, and dallying with both. 1 The phal- 
lic symbol superseded all others ; and in Cyprus, 
Babylonia and Phrygia, once in her life, at least, 
must every woman submit to the embrace of a 
stranger. 

Such rites were not mere sensualities. The 
priests of these divinities often voluntarily suf- 
fered emasculation. None but a eunuch could 
become high priest of Cybele. Among the six- 
teen million worshippers of Siva, whose symbol 
is the Lingam, impurity is far less prevalent 
than among the sister sects of Hindoo religions. 2 
To the Lingayets, the member typifies abstractly 
the idea of life. Therefore they carve it on 
sepulchres, or, like the ancient nations of Asia 
Minor, they lay clay images of it on graves to 
intimate the hope of existence beyond the tomb. 

This notion of a hermaphrodite deity is not 
" monstrous," as it has been called. There lies 

1 This is probably what was condemned in Deuteronomy 
xxii. 5, and Romans, i. 26. 

2 " The worship of Siva is too severe, too stern for the softer 
emotions of love, and all his temples are quite free from any 
allusions to it." — Ferguson, Tree and Serpent Worship, p. 71. 



THE IDEAL IS SEXLESS. 67 

a deep meaning in it. The gods are spirits, 
beings of another order, which the cultivated 
esthetic sense protests against classing as of one 
or the other gender. Never can the ideal of 
beauty, either physical or moral, be reached un- 
til the characteristics of sex are lost in the con- 
cept of the purely human. In the noblest men 
of history there has often been noted something 
feminine, a gentleness which is not akin to weak- 
ness ; and the women whose names are orna- 
ments to nations have displayed a calm great- 
ness, not unwomanly but something more than 
belongs to woman. Art acknowledges this. In 
the Vatican Apollo we see masculine strength 
united with maidenly softness ; and in the tra- 
ditional face and figure of Christ a still more 
striking example how the devout mind conjoins 
the traits of both sexes to express the highest 
possibility of the species. " Soaring above the 
struggle in which the real is involved with its 
limitations, and free from the characteristics of 
gender, the ideal of beauty as well as the ideal 
of humanity, alike maintain a perfect sexual 
equilibrium." * 

Another and more familiar expression of the 
religious emotion, akin to the belief in double- 

1 W. von Humboldt, in his admirable essay Ueber die 
Mannllche unci Weibliche Form [Werke,Bd. I.). Elsewhere he 
adds : " In der JSfatur des Goettlichen strebt alles der Reinheit 
und Vollkommenheit des Gattungsbegriff entgegen.' ' 



G8 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

sexed deities, — nay, in its physiological aspect 
identical with it, as assuming sexual self-suffi- 
ciency, is the myth of the Virgin-Mother. 

When Columbus first planted the cross on 
the shores of San Domingo, the lay brother 
Roman Pane, whom he sent forth to convert the 
natives of that island, found among them a story 
of a virgin Mamona, whose son Yocauna, a 
hero and a god, was chief among divinities, and 
had in the old times taught this simple people 
the arts of peace and guided them through the 
islands. 1 When the missionaries penetrated to 
the Iroquois, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and many 
other tribes, this same story was told them with 
such startling likeness to one they came to tell, 
that they felt certain either St. Thomas or Satan 
had got the start of them in America. 

But had these pious men known as well as 
we do the gentile religions of the Old World, 
they would have seasoned their admiration. 
Long before Christianity was thought of, the 
myth of the Virgin-Mother of God was in the 
faith of millions, as we have had abundantly 
shown us of late years by certain expounders of 
Christian dogmas. 

How is this strange, impossible belief to be 

1 1 have collected the Haitian myths, chiefly from the manu- 
script Historia Apologetica tie las Indicts Occidentals of Las 
Casas, in an essay published in 1871, The Araivack Language 
of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations. 



THE VIRGIN-MOTHERS. 69 

explained ? Of what secret, unconscious, psy- 
chological working was it the expression ? Look 
at its result. It is that wherever this doctrine 
is developed the status matrimonialis is held to 
be less pure, less truly religious, than the status 
virginitatis. Such is the teaching to-day in 
Lhassa, in Rome ; so it was in Yucatan, 
where, too, there were nunneries filled with 
spouses of God. I connect it with the general 
doctrine that chastity in either sex is more 
agreeable to Grod than marriage, and this belief, 
I think, very commonly arises at a certain stage 
of development of the religious sentiment, when 
it unconsciously recognises the indisputable fact 
that sex-love, whether in its form of love of 
woman, family, or nation, is not what that senti- 
ment craves. This is first shown by rejecting 
the idea of sex-love in the birth of the god ; then 
his priests and priestesses refuse its allurements, 
and deny all its claims, those of kindred, of 
country, of race, until the act of generation it- 
self is held unholy and the thought of sex a sin. 
By such forcible though rude displays do they 
set forth their unconscious acknowledgment of 
that eternal truth : " He that loveth son or 
daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me." 

The significance of these words is not that 
there is an antagonism in the forms of love. It 
is not that man should hate himself, as Pascal, 
following the teachings of the Church, so ably 



70 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

argued ; nor that the one sex should be set over 
against the other in sterile abhorrence ; nor yet 
that love of country and of kindred is incompat- 
ible with, that toward the Supreme of thought ; 
but it is that each of these lower, shallower, 
evanescent forms of emotion is and must be lost 
in, subordinated to, that highest form to which 
these words have reference. Keconciliation, not 
abnegation, is what they mean. 

Even those religions which teach in its strict- 
ness the oneness of God have rarely separated 
from his personality the attribute of sex. He is 
the father, pater et genitor, of all beings. The 
monotheism which we find in Greece and India 
generally took this form. The ancient Hebrews 
emphasized the former, not the latter sense of 
the word, and thus depriving it of its more 
distinctive characteristics of sex, prepared the 
way for the teachings of Christianity, in which 
the Supreme Being always appears with the at- 
tributes of the male, but disconnected from the 
idea of generation. 

Singularly enough, the efforts to which this 
latent incongruity prompts, even in persons 
speaking English, in which tongue the articles 
and adjectives have no genders, point back to 
the errors of an earlier age. A recent prayer by 
an eminent spiritualist commences : — " Oh Eter- 
nal Spirit, our Father and our Mother ! " The 
expression illustrates how naturally arises the 



SEXLESS DIVINITY. 71 

belief in a hermaphrodite god, when once sex is 
associated with deity. 

Of all founders of religions, Mohammed first 
proclaimed a divinity without relation to sex. 
One of his earliest suras reads : 

" He is God alone, 
God the eternal. 

He begetteth not, and is not begotten ; 
And there is none like unto him." 

And elsewhere : — 

" He hath no spouse, neither hath he any offspring." 1 

While he expressly acknowledged the divine 
conception of Jesus, he denied the coarse and 
literal version of that doctrine in vogue among 
the ignorant Christians around him. Enlight- 
ened Christendom, to-day, does not, I believe, 
differ from him on this point. 

Such sexual religions do not arise, as the 
theory has hitherto been, from study and obser- 
vation of the generative agencies in nature, but 
from the identity of object between love in sense 
and love in intellect, profane and sacred passion. 
The essence of each is continuance, preservation ; 
the origin of each is subjective, personal; but 
the former has its root in sensation, the latter in 
reason. 

The sex-difference in organisms, the " ab- 
horrence of self-fertilization " which Mr. Darwin 
speaks of as so conspicuous and inexplicable a 

1 The Koran, Suras, cxii., lxii., and especially xix. 



72 THE BELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

phenomenon, is but one example of the sway of 
a law which as action and reaction, thesis and 
antithesis, is common to both elementary motion 
and thought. The fertile and profound fancy 
of Greece delighted to prefigure this truth in 
significant symbols and myths. Love, Eros, 
is shown carrying the globe, or wielding the 
club of Hercules ; he is the unknown spouse 
of Psyche, the soul; and from the primitive 
chaos he brings forth the ordered world, the 
Kosmos. 

The intimate and strange relation between sen- 
suality and religion, so often commented upon and 
denied, again proven, and always misinterpreted, 
thus receives a satisfactory explanation. Some 
singular manifestations of it, of significance in 
religious history, are presented by the records of 
insane delusions. They confirm what I have above 
urged, that the association is not one derived from 
observation through intellectual processes, but 
is a consequence of physiological connections, of 
identity of aim in the distinct realms of thought 
and emotion. 

That eminent writer on mental diseases, 
Schroeder van der Kolk, when speaking of the 
forms of melancholy which arise from physi- 
cal conditions, remarks : " The patient who is 
melancholy from disorders of the generative 
organs considers himself sinful. His depressed 
tone of mind passes over into religious melan- 



SEXUAL RELIGIOUS DELUSIONS. 73 

clioly ; ' he is forsaken by God ; he is lost,' 
All his afflictions have a religious color." In a 
similar strain, Feuchtersleben says : " In the 
female sex especially, the erotic delusion, un- 
known to the patient herself, often assumes the 
color of the religious." 1 " The unaccomplished 
sexual designs of nature," observes a later author 
speaking of the effects of the single life, " lead to 
brooding over supposed miseries which suggest 
devotion and religious exercise as the nepenthe 
to soothe the morbid longings." 2 

Stimulate the religious sentiment and you 
arouse the passion of love, which will be direct- 
ed as the temperament and individual culture 
prompt. Develope very prominently any one 
form of love, and by a native affinity it will seize 
upon and consecrate to its own use whatever 
religious aspirations the individual has. This is 
the general law of their relation. 

All the lower forms of love point to one to 
which they are the gradual ascent, both of the 
individual and on a grander scale of the race, to 
wit, the love of God. This is the passion for the 
highest attainable truth, a passion which, as duty, 
prompts to the strongest action and to the utter 
sacrifice of all other longings. No speculative 
acquaintance with propositions satisfies it, no 

1 Elements of Medical Psychology, p. 281. 

2 J. Thompson Dickson, The Science and Practice of Medi- 
cine in relation to Mind, p. 383 (New York, 1874). 



74 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

egotistic construction of systems, but the truth 
expressed in life, the truth as that which alone 
either has or can give being and diuturnity, this 
is its food, for which it thirsts with holy ardor. 
Here is the genuine esoteric gnosis, the sacred 
secret, which the rude and selfish wishes of the 
savage, the sensual rites of Babylon, "mother 
of harlots," and the sublimely unselfish dreams 
of a "religion of humanity," have alike had in 
their hearts, but had no capacity to interpret, 
no words to articulate. 

Related to this emotional phase of the relig- 
ious sentiment is the theurgic power of certain 
natural objects over some persons. The bibli- 
cal scholar Kitto confesses that the moon exerted 
a strange influence on his mind, stirring his 
devotional nature, and he owns that it would not 
have been hard for him to join the worshippers 
of the goddess of the night. Wilhelm von Hum- 
boldt in one of his odes refers to similar feelings 
excited in him by the gloom and murmur of 
groves. The sacred poets and the religious arts 
generally acknowledge this fascination, as it has 
been called, which certain phenomena have for 
religious temperaments. 

The explanation which suggests itself is that 
of individual and ancestral association. In the 
case of Kitto it was probably the latter. His 
sensitively religious nature experienced in gazing 
at the moon an impression inherited from some 



RELIGIOUS EPILEPTICS. 75 

remote ancestor who had actually made it the 
object of ardent worship. The study of the laws 
of inherited memory, so successfully pursued of 
late by Professor Laycock, take away anything 
eccentric about this explanation, though I 
scarcely expect it will be received by one un- 
acquainted with those laws. 

The emotional aspect of religion is not ex- 
hausted by the varieties of fear and hope and 
love. Wonder, awe, admiration, the assthetic 
emotions, in fact all the active principles of 
man's mental economy are at times excited and 
directed by the thought of supernatural power. 
Some have attempted to trace the religious sen- 
timent exclusively to one or the other of these. 
But they are all incidental and subsidiary emo- 
tions. 

Certain mental diseases, by abnormally stim- 
ulating the emotions, predispose strongly to re- 
. ligious fervor. Epilepsy is one of these, and in 
Swedenborg and Mohammed, both epileptics, we 
see distinguished examples of religious mystics, 
who, no doubt honestly, accepted the visions 
which accompanied their disease as revelations 
from another world. Very many epileptics are 
subject to such delusions, and their insanity is 
usually of a religious character. 

On the other hand, devotional excitement is 
apt to bring about mental alienation. Every 
violent revival has left after it a small crop of 



76 THE BELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

religious melancholies and lunatics. Competent 
authorities state that in modern communities re- 
ligious insanity is most frequent in those sects 
who are given to emotional forms of religion, 
the Methodists and Baptists for example ; where- 
as it is least known among Koman Catholics, 
where doubt and anxiety are at once allayed by 
an infallible referee, and among the Quakers, 
where enthusiasm is discouraged and with whom 
the restraint of emotion is a part of discipline. 1 
Authoritative assurance in many disturbed con- 
ditions of mind is sufficient to relieve the mental 
tension and restore health. 

If, by what has been said, it is clear that the 
religious sentiment has its origin in a wish, it is 
equally clear that not every wish is concerned in 
it. The objects which a man can attain by his 
own unaided efforts, are not those which he 
makes the subjects of his prayers ; nor are the 
periodic and regular occurrences in nature, how 
impressive they may be, much thought of in de- 
votional moods. The moment that an event is 
recognized to be under fixed law, it is seen to be 
inappropriate to seek by supplication to alter 
it. No devotee, acquainted with the theory of 
the tides, would, like Canute the King, think of 
staying their waves with words. Eclipses and 

1 Dr. Joseph Williams, Insanity, its Causes, Prevention and 
Cure, pp. 68, 69 ; Dr. A. L. Wigan, The Duality of the Mind, 
p. 437. 



THE RELIGIOUS WIS II. 77 

comets, once matters of superstitious terror, have 
been entirely shorn of this attribute by astron- 
omical discovery. Even real and tragic misfor- 
tunes, if believed to be such as flow from fixed 
law, and especially if they can be predicted 
sometime before they arrive, do not excite 
religious feeling. As Bishop Hall quaintly ob- 
serves, referring to a curious medieval supersti- 
tion : " Crosses, after the nature of the cocka- 
trice, die if they be foreseen." 

Only when the event suggests the direct ac- 
tion of mind, of some free intelligence, is it pos- 
sible for the religious sentiment to throw around 
it the aureole of sanctity. Obviously when 
natural law was little known, this included vastly 
more occurrences than civilized men now think 
of holding to be of religious import. Hence the 
objective and material form of religion is always 
fostered by ignorance, and this is the form which 
prevails exclusively in uncultivated societies. 

The manifestations of motion which the child 
first notices, or which the savage chiefly observes, 
relate to himself. They are associated with the 
individuals around him who minister to his wants ; 
the gratification of these depend on the volitions 
of others. As he grows in strength he learns to 
supply his own wants, and to make good his own 
volitions as against those of his fellows. But he 
soon learns that many events occur to thwart 
him, out of connection with any known indi- 



78- THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

vidua!, and these of a dreadful nature, hurricanes 
and floods, hunger, sickness and death. These 
pursue him everywhere, foiling his plans, and 
frustrating his hopes. It is not the show of 
power, the manifestations of might, that he cares 
for in these events, but that they touch him, 
that they spoil his projects, and render vain his 
desires ; this forces him to cast about for some 
means to protect himself against them. 

In accordance with the teaching of his ex- 
perience, and true, moreover to the laws of 
mind, he refers them, collectively, to a mental 
source, to a vague individuality. This loose, un- 
defined conception of an unknown volition or 
power forms the earliest notion of Deity. It 
is hardly associated with personality, yet it is 
broadly separated from the human and the 
known. In the languages of savage tribes, as I 
have elsewhere remarked, "a word is usually 
found comprehending all manifestations of the 
unseen world, yet conveying no sense of per- 
sonal unity." * 

By some means to guard against this unde- 
fined marplot to the accomplishment of his wishes, 
is the object of his religion. Its primitive forms 
are therefore defensive and conciliatory. The 
hopes of the savage extend little beyond the 
reach of his own arm, and the tenor of his 

1 The Myths of the New World, a Treatise on the Symbolism 
and Mythology of the Red Race of America, p. 145. 



ELEMENTS OF THE WISH. 79 

prayers is that the gods be neuter. If they do 
not interfere he can take care of himself. His 
religion is a sort of assurance of life. 

Not only the religion of the savage, but every 
religion is this and not much but this. With 
nobler associations and purer conceptions of life, 
the religious sentiment ever contains these same 
elements and depends upon them for its vigor 
and growth. It everywhere springs from a 
desire whose fruition depends upon unknown 
power* To give the religious wish a definition 
in the technic of psychology, I define it as : Ex- 
pectant Attention, directed toward an event not 
under known control, with a concomitant idea 
of Cause or Power. 

Three elements are embraced in this defini- 
tion, a wish, an idea of power, ignorance of the 
nature of that power. The first term prompts 
the hope, the third sugge-sts the fear, and the 
second creates the personality, which we see set 
forth in every religious system. Without these 
three, religion as dogma becomes impossible. 

If a man wishes for nothing, neither the 
continuance of present comforts nor future 
blessings, why need he care for the gods? Who 
can hurt him, so long as he stays in his frame of 
mind ? He may well shake off all religions and 
every fear, for he is stronger than God, and the 
universe holds nothing worth his effort to get. 
This was the doctrine taught by Buddha Sakya- 



50 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

mini, a philosopher opposed to every form of 
religion, but who is the reputed founder of the 
most numerous sect now on the globe. He 
sought to free the minds of his day from the 
burden of the Brahmanic ritual, by cultivating 
a frame of mind beyond desire or admiration, 
and hence beyond the need of a creed. 

The second element, the idea of power, is an 
intellectual abstraction. Its character is fluctu- 
ating. At first it is most vague, corresponding 
to what in its most general sense we term 
" the supernatural." Later, it is regarded under 
its various exhibitions as separable phenomena, 
as in polytheisms, in which must be included trini- 
tarian systems and the dualistic doctrine of the 
Parsees. But among the Egyptians, Greeks and 
Aztecs, as well as in the words of Zarathustra and 
in the theology of Christianity,we frequently meet 
with the distinct recognition of the fundamental 
unity of all power. At core, all religions have 
seeds of monotheism. When we generalize the 
current concepts of motion or force beyond 
individual displays and relative measures of 
quantity, we recognize their qualitative identity, 
and appreciate the logical unity under which we 
must give them abstract expression. This is the 
process, often unconscious, which has carried 
most original thinkers to monotheistic doctrines, 

no matter whence thev started. 

c/ 

The idea of power controlling the unknown 



FIRST IDEAS OF BE LI GI ON. 81 

would of itself have been of no interest to man 
had he not assumed certain relations to exist 
between him and it on the one hand, and it and 
things on the other. A dispassionate inquiry 
disproves entirely the view maintained by 
various modern writers, prominently by Bain, 
Spencer and Darwin, that the contemplation of 
power or majesty in external nature prompts of 
itself the religious sentiment, or could have been 
its historical origin. Such a view overlooks' the 
most essential because the personal factor of 
religion — the wish. Far more correct are the 
words of David Hume, in the last century, by 
which he closes his admirable Natural History 
of Religions : " We may conclude, therefore, that 
in all nations the first ideas of religion arose not 
from a contemplation of the works of nature, 
but from a concern with regard to the events of 
life, and from the incessant hopes and fears 
which actuate the human mind." A century 
before him Hobbes had written in his terse way : 
" The natural seed of religion lies in these four 
things : the fear of spirits, ignorance of secondary 
causes, the conciliation of those we fear, and the 
assumption of accidents for omens." 1 The sen- 
timent of religion is in its origin and nature 
purely personal and subjective. The aspect of 
power would never have led man to worship, 
unless he had assumed certain relations between 

1 Leviathan, De Homine, cap. xii. 

6 



82 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

the unseen author or authors of that power and 
himself. What these assumptions were, I shall 
discuss in the next chapter. 

Finally, as has so often been remarked in a 
flippant and contemptuous way, 1 which the fact 
when rightly understood now T ise justifies, religion 
cannot exist without the aid of ignorance. It is 
really and truly the mother of devotion. The 
sentiment of religious fear does not apply to a 
known power — to the movement of an opposing 
army, or the action of gravity in an avalanche 
for example. The prayer which under such 
circumstances is offered, is directed to an un- 
known intelligence, supposed to control the vis- 
ible forces. As science — which is the knowl- 
edge of physical laws — extends, the object of 
prayer becomes more and more intangible and 
remote. What we formerly feared, we learn to 
govern. No one would pray God to avert the 
thunderbolt, if lightning rods invariably pro- 
tected houses. The Swiss clergy opposed the 
system of insuring growing crops because it 
made their parishioners indifferent to prayers 
for the harvest. With increasing knowledge 

1 For instance, of later writers from whom we might expect 
better things, Arthur Schopenhauer. He says in his Parerga 
(Bd. ii. s. 290): "Ein gewisser Grad allgemeiner Unwissenheit 
ist die Bedingung aller Religionen ; " a correct remark, and 
equally correct of the pursuit of science and philosophy. But 
the ignorance which is the condition of such pursuit is not a part 
of science or philosophy, and no more is it of religion. 



MAN ROBS THE GODS. 83 

and the security which it brings, religious terror 
lessens, and the wants which excite the sentiment 
of devotion diminish in number and change in 
character. 

This is apt to cast general discredit on 
religion. When we make the discovery that so 
many events which excited religious apprehen- 
sion in the minds of our forefathers are governed 
by inflexible laws which we know all about, we 
not only smile in pity at their superstitions, but 
make the mental inference that the diminished 
emotion of this kind we yet experience is equally 
groundless. If at the bottom of all displays of 
power lies a physical necessity, our qualms are 
folly. Therefore, to the pious soul which still 
finds the bulk of its religious aspirations and 
experiences in the regions of the emotions and 
sensations, the progress of science seems and 
really does threaten its cherished convictions. 
The audacious mind of* man robs the gods of 
power when he can shield himself from their 
anger. The much-talked-of conflict between 
religion and science is no fiction; it exists, and 
is bound to go on, and religion will ever get the 
worst of it until it learns that the wishes to 
which it is its proper place to minister are not 
those for pleasure and prosperity, not for 
abundant harvests and seasonable showers, not 
success in battle and public health, not preser- 
vation from danger and safety on journeys, not 



84 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

much of anything that is spoken of in litanies 
and books of devotion. 

Let a person who still clings to this form of 
religion imagine that science had reached per- 
fection in the arts of life ; that by skilled adap- 
tations of machinery, accidents by sea and land 
were quite avoided ; that observation and ex- 
perience had taught to foresee with certainty and 
to protect effectively against all meteoric dis- 
turbances • that a perfected government insured 
safety of person and property ; that a consummate 
agriculture rendered want and poverty unknown ; 
that a developed hygiene completely guarded 
against disease ; and that a painless extinction 
of life in advanced age could surely be calcu- 
lated upon ; let him imagine this, and then ask 
himself what purpose religion would subserve 
in such a state of things ? For whatever would 
occupy it then — if it could exist at all — should 
alone occupy it now. 



THE RATIONAL POSTULATES OF THE 
RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 



SUMMARY. 



Eeligion often considered merely an affair of the feelings. On the con. 
trary, it must assume at least three premises in reasou, its " rational postu- 
lates." 

I. There is Order in things. 

The religious wish involves the idea of cause. This idea not exhausted 
by uniformity of sequence, but by quantitative relation, that is, Order as 
opposed to Chance. Both science and religion assume order in things ; but 
the latter includes the Will of God in this order, while the former rejects it. 

II. This order is one of Intelligence. 

The order is assumed to be a comprehensible one, whether it be of law 
wholly or of volition also. 

III. All Intelligence is one in kind. 

This postulate indispensable to religion, although it has been attacked by 
religious as well as irreligious philosophers. Its decision must res* on the 
absoluteness of the formal laws of thought. The theory that these are pro- 
ducts of natural selections disproved by showing, (1) that they hold true 
throughout the material universe, and (2) that they do not depend on it for 
their verity. Reason sees beyond phenomena, but descries nothing alien to 
itself. 

The formal laws of reason are purposive. They therefore afford a pre- 
sumption of a moral government of the Universe, and point to an Intelli- 
gence fulfilling an end through the order in physical laws. Such an assump- 
tion, common to all historic religions, is thus justified by induction. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE KATIONAL POSTULATES OF THE EELIGIOUS 
SENTIMENT. 

In philosophical discussions of religion as 
well as in popular exhortations upon it, too ex- 
clusive stress has been laid upon its emotional 
elements. "It is," says Professor Bain, " an 
affair of the feelings." 1 " The essence of relig- 
ion," observes John Stuart Mill, " is the strong 
and earnest direction of the emotions and desires 
towards an ideal object." " It must be allowed," 
says Dr. Mansel, 2 " that it is not through reason- 
ing that men obtain their first intimation of their 
relation to a deity." In writers and preachers of 
the semi-mystical school, which embraces most of 
the ardent revivalists of the day, we constantly 
hear the " feeling of dependence " quoted as 
the radical element of religious thought. 3 In 

i The Emotions and Will, p. 594. So Professor Tyndall 
speaks of confining the religious sentiment to " the region of 
emotion, which is its proper sphere." 

2 H. L. Mansel, The Limits of Religious Thought, p. 115. 
(Boston, 1859.) 

3 " The one relation which is the ground of all true religion is 
a total dependence upon God." William Law, Address to the 
Clergy, p. 12. " The essential germ of the religious life is con- 



83 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

America Theodore Parker, and in Germany 
Schleiermacher, were brilliant exponents of this 
doctrine. To the latter the philosopher Hegel 
replied that if religion is a matter of feeling, an 
affectionate clog is the best Christian. 

This answer was not flippant, bnt founded on 
the true and only worthy conception of the relig- 
ious sentiment. We have passed in review the 
emotions which form a part of it, and recognize 
their power. But neither these nor any other 
mere emotions, desires or feelings can explain 
even the lowest religion. It depends for its ex- 
istence on the essential nature of reason. We 
cannot at all allow, as Dr. Mansel asks of us, that 
man's first intimations of Deity came in any 
other way than as one of the ripest fruits of rea- 
son. Were such the case, we should certainly 
hnci traces of them among brutes and idiots, 
which we clo not. The slight signs of religious 
actions thought to have been noticed by some 
in the lower animals, by Sir John Lubbock in 
ants, and by Charles Darwin in dogs, if authen- 
ticated, would vindicate for these species a much 
closer mental kinship to man than we have yet 
supposed. 

If we dispassionately analyze any religion 

centrated in the absolute feeling of dependence on infinite 
power." J. D. Morell, The Philosophy of Religion, p. 94. (New 
York, 1849.) This accomplished author, well known for his 
History of Philosophy, is the most able English exponent of the 
religious views of Schleiermacher and Jacobi. 



THE THREE POSTULATES. 89 

whatever, paying less attention to what its pro- 
fessed teachers say it is, than to what the mass 
of the votaries believe it to be, we shall see that 
every form of adoration unconsciously assumes 
certain premises in reason, which give impulse 
and character to its emotional and active mani- 
festations. They are its data or axioms, or, 
as I shall call them, its " rational postulates." 
They can, I believe, be reduced to three, but 
not to a lesser number. 

Before the religious feeling acquires the dis- 
tinctness of a notion and urges to conscious ac- 
tion, it must assume at least these three postu- 
lates, and without them it cannot rise into cog- 
nition. These, their necessary character and 
their relations, I shall set forth in this chapter. 

They are as follows : — 

I. There is Order in things. 
II. This order is one of Intelligence. 
III. All Intelligence is one in kind. 

I. The conscious or unconscious purpose of 
the religious sentiment, as I have shown in the 
last chapter, is the fruition of a wish, the suc- 
cess of which depends upon unknown power. 
The votary asks help where he cannot help him- 
self. He expects it through an exertion of pow- 
er, through an efficient cause. Obviously there- 
fore, he is acting on the logical idea of Caus- 
ality. This underlies and is essential to the sim- 



90 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

plest prayer. He extends it, moreover, out of 
the limits of experience into the regions of hypo- 
thesis. He has carried the analogy of observa- 
tion into the realm of abstract conceptions. No 
matter if he does believe that the will of God 
is the efficient cause. Perhaps he is right; at 
any rate he cannot be denied the privilege of 
regarding volition as a co-operating cause. 
Limited at first to the transactions which most 
concerned men, the conception of order as a 
divine act extended itself to the known universe. 
Herodotus derives the Greek word for God 
(0-oc) from a root which gives the meaning 
" to set in order," and the Scandinavians gave 
the same sense to their word, Begin} Thus the 
abstract idea of cause or power is a postulate 
of all religious thought. Let us examine its 
meaning. 

Every reader, the least versed in the history 
of speculative thought for the last hundred 
years, knows how long and violent the discus- 
sions have been of the relations of " cause and 
effect." Startled by the criticisms of Hume, 
Kant sought to elude them by distinguishing 
between two spheres of thought, the understand- 
ing and the reason. Sir William Hamilton at 

1U Weil sie die Welt eingerichtet haben." Creuzer, SymhoVh 
und Mythologie der alien Vcelker, Bd. I. s. 169. It is not of any 
importance that Herodotus' etymology is incorrect : what I wish 
to show is that he and his contemporaries entertained the con- 
ception of the gods as the authors of order. 



CAUSE AND EFFECT. 91 

first included the " principle of sufficient reason' 
in the laws of thought, but subsequently rejected 
it as pertaining to judgments, and therefore ma- 
terial, not formal. Schopenhauer claimed to 
have traced it to a fourfold root, and Mill with 
most of the current English schools, Bain, Austin, 
Spencer, &c, maintained that it meant nothing 
but "uniformity of sequence." 

It would be vain to touch upon a discussion so 
extended as this. In the first chapter I have 
remarked that the idea of cause does not enter 
into the conceptions of pure logic or thought. 
It is, as Hamilton saw, material. I shall only 
pause to show what is meant by the term " cause" 
in the physical sciences. When one event follows 
another, time after time, we have " uniformity of 
sequence." Suppose the constitution of the 
race were so happy that we slept at night only, 
and always awoke a few moments before sunrise. 
Such a sequence quite without exception, should, 
if uniform experience is the source of the idea 
of cause, justly lead to the opinion that the sun 
rises because man awakes. As we know this 
conclusion would be erroneous, some other 
element beside sequence must complete a real 
cause. If now, it were shown that the relation 
of cause to effect which we actually entertain and 
cannot help entertaining is in some instances 
flatly contrary to all experience, then we must 
acknoAvledge that the idea of cause asks to con- 



92 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

firm it something quite independent of expe- 
rience, that is abstract. But such examples 
are common. We never saw two objects con- 
tinue to approach without meeting ; but we 
are constrained to believe that lines of certain 
descriptions can forever approach and never 
meet. 

The uniformity of sequence is, in fact, in the 
physical sciences never assumed to express the 
relation of cause and effect, until the connection 
between the antecedent and consequent can be 
set forth abstractly in mathematical formulae. 
The sequence of the planetary motions was 
discovered by Kepler, but it was reserved 
for Newton to prove the theoretical neces- 
sity of this motion and establish its mathe- 
matical relations. The sequence of sensations 
to impressions is well known, but the law of 
the sequence remains the desideratum in psy- 
chology. 1 

Science, therefore, has been correctly defined 
as " the knowledge of system." Its aim is to 
ascertain the laws of phenomena, to define the 
" order in things." Its fundamental postulate is 
that order exists, that all things are " lapped in 
universal law." It acknowledges no exception, 
and it considers that all law is capable of final 
expression in quantity, in mathematical symbols. 

1 This distinction is well set forth by A. von Humboldt, 
Kosmos, p. 388 (Phila., 1869). 



ORDER IN THINGS. 93 

It is the manifest of reason, "whose unceasing 
endeavor is to banish the idea of Chance." 1 

We thus see that its postulate is the same 
as that of the religious sentiment. Wherein 
then do they differ ? Not in the recognition of 
chance. Accident, chance, does not exist for 
the religious sense in any stage of its growth. 
Everywhere religion proclaims in the words of 
Dante : — 

" le cose tutte quante, 
Harm' ordin-e tra loro ; " 

everywhere in the more optimistic faiths it holds 
this order, in the words of St. Augustine, to be 
one " most fair, of excellent things." 2 

What we call "the element of chance " is 
in its scientific sense that of which we do not 
know the law ; while to the untutored religious 
mind it is the manifestation of divine will. The 
Kamschatkan, when his boat is lost in the storm, 
attributes it to the vengeance of a god angered 
because he scraped the snow from his shoes with 
a knife, instead of using a piece of wood ; if a 
Dakota has bad luck in hunting, he says it is 
caused by his wife stepping over a bone and 

1 " UeberalldenZufall zu verbannen, zu verhindern, dass in 
dem Gebiete des Beobachtens und Denkens er nicht zu herrschen. 
scheme, im Gebiete des Handelns nicht herrsche, ist das 
Streben der Vernunft." Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ueber 
Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea, iv. 

2 " Tste ordo pulcherrimus rerum valde bonarum." Con- 
fessiones, Lib. xiii. cap. xxxv. 



91 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

thus irritating a spirit. The idea of cause, the 
sentiment of order, is as strong as ever, but 
it differs from that admitted by science in 
recognizing as a possible efficient motor that 
which is incapable of mathematical expression, 
namely, a volition, a will. Voluntas Dei asylum 
ignorantice, is no unkind description of such an 
opinion. 

So long as this recognition is essential to the 
life of a religious system, just so long it will 
and must be in conflict with science, with 
every prospect of the latter gaining the vic- 
tory. Is the belief in volition as an efficient 
cause indispensable to the religious sentiment 
in general ? For this vital question we are not 
yet prepared, but must first consider the re- 
maining rational postulates it assumes. The 
second is 

II. This order is one of intelligence. 

By this is not meant that the order is one of 
an Intelligence, but simply that the order which 
exists in things is conformable to man's thinking 
power, — that if he knows the course of events 
he can appreciate their relations, — that facts 
can be subsumed under thoughts. Whatever 
scheme of order there were, would be nothing 
to him unless it were conformable to his intel- 
lectual functions. It could not form the matter 
of his thought. 1 

l " The notion of a God is not contained in the mere notion 



AN INTELLIGIBLE ORDER. 95 

Science, which deals in the first instance 
exclusively with phenomena, also assumes this 
postulate. It recognizes that when the formal 
laws, which it is its mission to define, are ex- 
amined apart from their material expression, 
when they are emptied of their phenomenal 
contents, they show themselves to be logical 
constructions, reasoned truths, in other words, 
forms of intelligence. The votary who assumes the 
order one of volition alone, or volition with physi- 
cal necessity, still assumes the volitions are as 
comprehensible as are his own ; that they are 
purposive ; that the order, even if not clear to 
him, is both real and reasonable. Were it not 
so, did he believe that the gods carried out 
their schemes through a series of caprices in- 
conceivable to intelligence, through absolute 
chance, insane caprice, or blind fate, he could 
neither see in occurrences the signs of divine 
rule, nor hope for aid in obtaining his wishes. 
In fact, order is only conceivable to man at 
all as an order conformable to his own intelli- 
gence. 

This second postulate embraces what has 
been recently called the " Principle of con- 
tinuity," indispensable to sane thought of any 
kind. A late work defines it as " the trust that 
the Supreme Governor of the Universe will not 

of Cause, that is the notion of Fate or Power. To this must 
be added Intelligence," etc. Sir Wm. Hamilton, Lectures on 
MetapJujsics, Lecture ii. 



9G THE BELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

put us to permanent intellectual confusion." 1 
Looked at closely, it is the identification of order 
with reason. 

The third and final postulate of the religious 
sentiment is that 

III. All intelligence is one in kind. 

CD 

Eeligion demands that there be a truth 
/ which is absolutely true, and that there be a 
goodness which is universally and eternally 
good. Each system claims the possession, and 
generally the exclusive possession, of this good- 
ness and truth. They are right in maintaining 
these views, for unless such is the case, unless 
there is an absolute truth, cognizable to man, 
yet not transcended by any divine intelligence, 
all possible religion becomes mere child's play, 
and its professed interpretation of mysteries but 
trickery. 

The Grecian sophists used to meet the de- 
monstrations of the mathematicians and philos- 
ophers by conceding that they did indeed set 
forth the truth, so far as man's intelligence goes, 
but that to the intelligence of other beings — a bat 
or an angel, for example— they might not hold 
good at all ; that there is a different truth for 
different intelligences ; that the intelligence 
makes the truth • and that as for the absolutely 
true, true to every intelligence, there is no such 
thing. They acknowledged that a simple syl- 

1 The Unseen Universe, p. 60. 



THE ONENESS OF INTELLIGENCE. 97 

logism, constructed on these premises, made 
their own assertions partake of the doubtful 
character that was by them ascribed to other 
human knowledge. But this they gracefully 
accepted as the inevitable conclusion of reason- 
ing. Their position is defended to-day by the 
advocates of "positivism," who maintain the 
relativity of all truth. 

But such a conclusion is wholly incompati- 
ble with the religious mind. It must assume 
that there are some common truths, true in- 
finitely, and therefore, that in all intelligence 
there is an essential unity of kind. u This pos- 
tulation," says a close thinker, " is the very 
foundation and essence of religion. Destroy it, 
and you destroy the very possibility of re- 
ligion." * 

Clear as this would seem to be to any 
reflective mind, yet, strange to say, it is to- 
day the current fashion for religious teachers 
to deny it. Scared by a phantasm of their 
own creation, they have deserted the only posi- 
tion in which it is possible to defend religion 
at all. Afraid of the accusation that they 

1 James Frederick Ferrier, Lectures on Greek Philosophy, p. 13 
(Edinburgh, 1866). On a question growing directly out of this, 
to wit, the relative character of good and evil, Mr. J. S. Mill ex r 
presses himself thus : " My opinion of this doctrine is, that it 
is beyond all others which now engage speculative minds, the 
decisive one between moral good and evil for the Christian 
world." Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 90. 

7 



98 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

make God like man, they Have removed Him 
beyond the pale of all intelligence, and logical- 
ly, therefore, annihilated every conception of 
Him. 

Teachers and preachers do not tire of telling 
their followers that God is incomprehensible ; 
that his ways are past finding out ; that he is 
the Unconditioned, the Infinite, the Unknow- 
able. They really mean that he is another or- 
der of intelligence, which, to quote a famous 
comparison of Spinoza, has the same name as 
ours, but is no more one with it than the dog is 
one with his namesake, the dog-star ! 

They are eagerly seconded in this position 
by a school of writers who distinctly see where 
such a doctrine leads, and who do not hesitate 
to carry it home. Mr. Mill is right in his scorn 
for those who " erect the incurable limitations of 
the human conceptive faculty into laws of the 
outward universe," if there are such limitations. 
And Mr. Spencer is justified in condemning 
" the transcendent audacity which passes current 
as piety," if his definition of the underlying 
verity of religion is admitted — that it is " the 
consciousness of an inscrutable power which, 
in its nature, transcends intuition, and is beyond 
imagination." 1 They are but following the 
orthodox Sir William Hamilton, who says: 
" Creation must be thought as the incomprehen- 

i First Principles, pp. 108, 127. 



A WISE MASTER. 99 

sible evolution of power into energy." 1 We 
are to think that which by the terms of the 
proposition is unthinkable ! A most wise mas- 
ter ! 

Let it be noted that the expressions such as 
inscrutable, incomprehensible, unknowable, etc., 
which such writers use, are avowedly not limited 
to man's intelligence in its present state of cul- 
tivation, but are applied to his kind of intelli- 
gence, no matter how far trained. They mean 
that the inscrutable, etc., is not merely not 
at present open to man's observation — that were 
a truism — but that it cannot be subsumed un- 
der the laws of his reasoning powers. In other 
words, they deny that all intelligence is one in 
kind. Some accept this fully, and concede that 
what are called the laws of order, as shown by 
science, are only matters of experience, true 
here and now, not necessarily and absolutely 
true. 

This is a consistent inference, and applies, 
of course, with equal force to all moral laws 
and religious dogmas. 

The arguments brought against such opinions 
have been various. The old reply to the sophists 
has been dressed in modern garb, and it has been 
repeatedly put that if no statement is really 
true, then this one, to wit " no statement is 
really true," also is not true ; and if that is the 

i Lectures on Metaphysics, Vol. I., p. 690. 



100 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

case, then there are statements which realty are 
true. The theory of evolution as a dogma has 
been attacked by its own maxims ; in asserting 
that all knowledge is imperfect, it calls its own 
verity into question. If all truth is relative, 
then this at least is absolutely true. 

It has also been noted that all such words as 
incomprehensible, unconditioned, infinite, un- 
knowable, are in their nature privatives, they 
are not a thought but are only one element of a 
thought. As has been shown in the first chapter, 
every thought is made up of a positive and a 
privative, and it is absurd and unnatural to sepa- 
rate the one from the other. The concept man, 
regarded as a division of the higher concept ani- 
mal, is made up of man and not-man. In so far 
as other animals are included under the term 
"not-man" they do not come into intelligent 
cognition ; but that does not mean that they 
cannot clo so. So " the unconditioned " is really 
a part of the thought of " the conditioned," the 
" unknowable " a part of the " knowable," the 
" infinite " a part of the thought of the " finite." 
Under material images these privatives, as such, 
cannot be expressed; but in pure thought which 
deals with symbols and types alone, they can be. 

But if the abstract laws of thought them- 
selves are confined in the limits of one kind of 
intelligence, then we cannot take an appeal 
to them to attack this sophism. Therefore 



THE LAWS OF THOUGHT. 101 

on maintaining their integrity the discussion 
must finally rest. This has been fully recognized 
by thinkers, one of whom has not long since 
earnestly called attention to " the urgent neces- 
sity of fathoming the psychical mechanism on 
which rests all our intellectual life." 1 

In this endeavor the attempt has been made 
to show that the logical laws are derived in 
accordance with the general theory of evolution 
from the natural or material laws of thinking. 
These, as I have previously remarked, are those 
of the association of ideas, and come under the 
general heads of contiguity and similarity. Such 
combinations are independent of the aim of the 
logical laws, which is correct thinking. A German 
writer, Dr. Windelbancl, has therefore argued 
that as experience, strengthened by hereditary 
transmission, continued to show that the particu- 
lar combinations which are in accord with what . 
we call the laws of thought furnished the best, 
that is, the most useful results, they were adopted 
in preference to others and finally assumed as 
the criteria of truth. 

Of course it follows from this that as these 
laws are merely the outcome of human experience 
they can have no validity outside of it. Conse- 
quently, adds the writer I have quoted, just as 
the study of optics teaches us that the human 
eye yields a very different picture of the exter- 

1 Professor Stein thai in the Zeitschrift filr Volkerpsychologie. 



102 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

nal world from that given by the eye of a fly, 
for instance, and as each of them is equally far 
from the reality, so the truth which our intel- 
ligence enables us to reach is not less remote 
from that which is the absolutely true. He con- 
siders that this is proven by the very nature 
of the " law of contradiction" itself, which must 
be inconsistent with the character of absolute 
thought. For in the latter, positive truth only 
can exist, therefore no negation, and no law 
about the relation of affirmative to negative. 1 

The latter criticism assumes that negation is of 
the nature of error, a mistake drawn from the use 
of the negative in applied logic. For in formal 
logic, whether as quantity or quality, that is, in 
pure mathematics or abstract thought, the reason- 
ing is just as correct when negatives are employ- 
ed as when positives, as I have remarked before. 
The other criticism is more important, for if we 
can reach the conclusion that the real laws of the 
universe are other than as we understand them, 
then our intelligence is not of a kind to repre- 
sent them. 

Such an opinion can be refuted directly. The 
laws which Ave profess to know are as operative 
in the remotest nebulae as in the planet we in- 
habit. It is altogether likely that countless 

1 Dr. W. Windelband, Die Erkenntnissielire unter dem voelker- 
psycTiologischem Gesichtspunkte, in the Zeitschrift fitr Volkerjisy- 
cliologie, 1874, Bd. VIII. S. 165 sqq. 



REASON UBIQUITOUS. 103 

forms of intelligent beings inhabit the starry 
wastes, receiving through sensory apparatus 
widely different from ours very diverse impres- 
sions of the external world. All this we know, but 
we also know that if those beings have defined 
the laws which underlie phenomena, they have 
found them to be the same that we have ; for were 
they in the least different, in principle or applica- 
tion, they could not furnish the means, as those we 
know do, of predicting the recurrence of the ce- 
lestial motions with unfailing accuracy. There- 
fore the demonstrations of pure mathematics, 
such as the relation of an absciss to an ordinate, 
or of the diameter to the circumference, must be 
universally true ; and hence the logical laws 
which are the ultimate criteria of these truths 
must also be true to every intelligence, real or 
possible. 1 

Another and forcible reply to these objections 
is that the laws which our intelligence has reached 
and recognizes as universally true are not only not 
derived from experience, but are in direct oppo- 
sition to and are constantly contradicted by it. 
Neither sense nor imagination has ever portrayed 
a perfect circle in which the diameter bore to the 
circumference the exact proportion which we 
know it does bear. The very fact that we have 

1 1 would ask the reader willing to pursue this reasoning 
further, to peruse the charming essay of Oersted, entitled Das 
ganze Dasein Ein Vernunftreich. 



101 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

learned that our senses are wholly untrustworthy, 
and that experience is always fallacious, shows 
that we have tests of truth depending on some 
other faculty. " Each series of connected facts in 
nature furnishes the intimation of an order more 
exact than that which it directly manifests.*'' 1 

But. it has been urged, granted that we have 
reached something like positive knowledge of 
those laws which are the order of the manifesta- 
tion of phenomena, the real Inscrutable, the 
mysterious Unknowable, escapes us still ; this is 
the nature of phenomenal manifestation. " the 
secret of the Power manifested in Existence.*' 2 
At this point the physicist trips and falls; and 
here. too. the metaphysician stumbles. 

I have already spoken of our aptitude to be 
frightened by a chimera, and deceived by such 
words as "nature" and " cause.'*' Laws and 
rules, by which we express Order, are restrictive 
onlv in a condition of intelligence short of com- 

i Geo. Boole. An Investigation of the Laics of Thought, p. i 7. 

- Herbert Spencer, First Principles, p. 112. Spinoza's 
famous proposition, previously quoted, Unaquceque res quan- 
tum in se est, in sua esse perseverare conatur, (Ethices, Pars III., 
Prep. VI..) expresses also the ultimate of modern investigation. 
A recent critic considers it is a fallacy because the conatus 
" surreptitiously implies a sense of effort or struggle for exist- 
ence, 1 ' whereas the logical concept of a res does not involve 
effort (S. H". Hodgson, The Theory of Practice, vol. I. pp. 101-6, 
London. 1870.) The answer is that identity implies continu- 
ance. In organic life vre have the fact of nutrition, a function 
whose duty is to supply waste, and hence offer direct opposition 
to perturbing forces. 



TRUE FREEDOM ABOVE LA W. 105 

pleteness, only therefore in that province of 
thought which concerns itself with material facts. 
The musician is not fettered by the laws of 
harmony, but only by those of discord. The 
truly virtuous man, remarks Aristotle, never has 
occasion to practise self-denial. Hence, mathe- 
matically, " the theory of the intellectual action in- 
volves the recognition of a sphere of thought from 
which all limits are withdrawn." 1 True freedom, 
real being, is only possible when law as such is 
inexistent. Only the lawless makes the law. 
When the idea of the laws of order thus disap- 
pears in that of free function consistent with per- 
fect order, when, as Kant expresses it, we ascend 
from the contemplation of things acting accord- 
ing to law, to action according to the representa- 
tion of law, 2 we can, without audacity, believe 
that we have penetrated the secret of existence, 
that we have reached the limits of explanation 
and found one wholly satisfying the highest rea- 
son. Intelligence, not apart from phenomena, but 
parallel with them, not under law, but through 
perfect harmony above it, power one with being, 
the will which is "the essence of reason," the 
emanant cause of phenomena, immanent only by 
the number of its relations we have not learned, 
this is the satisfying and exhaustive solution. 

1 Geo. Boole, The Laws of Thought, p. 419. 

2 Kant, The Metaphysic of Etliics, p. 23 (Eng. Trans. Lon- 
don, 18G9.) 



106 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

The folly lies not in claiming reason as the abso- 
lute, but in assuming that the absolute is beyond 
and against reason. 

There is nothing new in this explanation ; and 
it is none the worse for being old. If Anaxag- 
oras discerned it dimly, and many a one since 
him has spoken of Intelligence, Eeason, Nous or 
Logos as the constructive factor of the creation ; 
if " all the riper religions of the Orient assumed 
as their fundamental principle that unless the 
Highest penetrates all parts of the Universe, 
and itself conditions whatever is conditioned, 
no universal order, no Kosmos, no real exist- 
ence is thinkable ; " * such inadequate expressions 
should never obscure the truth that reason in 
its loftiest flights descries nothing nobler than 
itself. 

The relative, as its name implies, for ever 
presupposes and points to the absolute, the latter 
an Intelligence also, not one that renders ours 
futile and fallacious, but one that imparts to ours 
the capacity we possess of reaching eternal and 
ubiquitous truth. The severest mathematical rea- 
soning forces us to this conclusion, and we can 
dispense with speculation about it. 

Only on the principle Avhich here receives its 
proof, that man has something in him of God, 
that the norm of the true holds good throughout, 

1 Creuzsr, Symbolik unci Myihologie der alten VoeUcer, Bd. 
I. s. 29l. 



FAITH vs. REASON. 107 

can lie know or care anything about divinity. 
" It takes a god to discern a god/' profoundly 
wrote Novalis. 

When a religion teaches what reason disclaims, 
not through lack of testimony but through a 
denial of the rights of reason, then that religion 
wars against itself and will fall. Faith is not the 
acceptance of what intelligence rejects, but a 
suspension of judgment for want of evidence. 
A thoroughly religious mind will rejoice when 
its faith is shaken with doubt ; for the doubt 
indicates increased light rendering perceptible 
some possible error not before seen. 

Least of all should a believer in a divine 
revelation deny the oneness of intelligence. For if 
he is right, then the revealed truth he talks about 
is but relative and partial, and those inspired 
men who claimed for it the sig;n manual of the 
Absolute were fools, insane or liars. 

If the various arguments I have rehearsed 
indicate conclusively that in the laws of thought 
we have the norms of absolute truth — and skepti- 
cism on this point can be skepticism and not be- 
lief only by virtue of the very law which it doubts 
— some important corollaries present themselves. 

Regarding in the first place the nature of 
these laws, we find them very different from 
those of physical necessity — those which are 
called the laws of nature. The latter are authori- 
tative, they are never means to an end, they 



10S THE BEL1GIOUS SENTIMENT. 

admit no exception, the}' leave no room for 
error. Not so with the laws of reasoning. Man 
far more frequently disregards than obeys them ; 
they leave a wide field for fallacy. Wherein then 
lies that theoretical necessity which is the essence 
of law ? The answer is that the laws of reason- 
ing are purposive only, they are regulative, not 
constitutive, and their theoretical necessity lies 
in the end, the result of reasoning, that is, in 
the knowing, in the recognition of truth. They 
are what the Germans call Zweckgesetze. 1 

But in mathematical reasoning and in the 
processes of physical nature the absolute charac- 
ter of the laws which prevail depends for its 
final necessity on their consistency, their entire 
correspondence with the laws of right reasoning. 
Applied to them the purposive character of the 
laws is not seen, for their ends are fulfilled. We 
are brought, therefore, to the momentous con- 
clusion that the manifestation of Order, whether 
in material or mental processes, " affords a pre- 
sumption, not measurable indeed but real, of the 
fulfilment of an end or purpose ;" * and this 
purpose, one which has other objects in view 
than the continuance of physical processes. The 
history of mind, from protoplasmic sensation 

1 See this distinction between physical and thought laws 
fully set forth by Trof. Boole in the appendix to The Laws of 
TJtour/ht, and by Dr. Windelband, Z eltsclirift fur Voelherpsyclio- 
lugle. Bd. VIII., s. 165 sqq. 
2 Geo. Boole, u. s. p. 399. 



THE HISTORY OF MIND. 109 

upward, must be a progression, whose end will 
be worth more than was its beginning, a process, 
which has for its purpose the satisfaction of the 
laws of mind. This is nothing else than correct 
thinking, the attainment of truth. 

But this conclusion, reached loy a searching 
criticism of the validity of scientific laws, is pre- 
cisely that which is the postulate of all developed 
creeds. " The faith of all historical religions," 
says Bunsen, " starts from the assumption of a 
universal moral order, in which the good is alone 
the true, and the true is the only good." 1 

The purposive nature of the processes of 
thought, as well as the manner in which they 
govern the mind, is illustrated by the history of 
man. His actions, whether as an individual or as 
a nation, are guided by ideas not derived from 
the outer world, for they do not correspond to 
actual objects, but from mental pictures of things 
as he wants them to exist. These are his hopes, 
his wishes, his ideals ; they are the more potent, 
and prompt to more vigorous action, the clearer 
they are to his mind. Even when he is uncon- 
scious of them, they exist as tendencies, or in- 
stincts, inherited often from some remote ances- 
tor, perhaps even the heir-loom of a stage of 

1 " Der Glaube aller geschichtlichen Religion en gent aus 
von dieser Annahme einer sittliclien, in Gott bewusst lebenden, 
Weltordnung, wonach das Gute das allein Wall re ist, and das 
Wahre das allein Gute." Gott in der Geschichle, Bd. I. s. xl. 
Leipzig, 1857. 



110 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

lower life, for they occur where sensation alone 
is present, and are an important factor in general 
evolution. 

It is usually conceded that this theory of or- 
ganic development very much attenuates the 
evidence of what is known as the argument from 
design in nature, by which the existence of an 
intelligent Creator is sought to be shown. If the 
distinction between the formal laws of math- 
ematics, which are those of nature, and logic, 
which are those of mind, be fully understood, no 
one will seek such an argument in the former 
but in the latter only, for they alone, as I have 
shown, are purposive, and they are wholly so. 
The only God that nature points to is an ad- 
amantine Fate. 

If religion has indeed the object which Bun- 
sen assigns it, physical phenomena cannot concern 
it. Its votaries should not look to change the 
operation of natural laws by incantations, pray- 
ers or miracles. 

Whenever in the material world there pre- 
sents itself a seeming confusion, it is certain to 
turn out but an incompleteness of our ob- 
servation, and on closer inspection it resolves 
itself into some higher scheme of Order. This 
is not so in the realm of thought. Wrong think- 
ing never can become right thinking. A profound 
writer has said : " One explanation only of these 
facts can be given, viz., that the distinction be- 



NO CONFUSION IN NATURE. Ill 

tween true and false, between correct and incor- 
rect, exists in the processes of the intellect, but 
not in the region of a physical necessity." x A re- 
ligion therefore which claims as its mission the 
discovery of the true and its identification with 
the good, — in other words the persuading man 
that he should always act in accordance with the 
dictates of right reasoning — should be addressed 
primarily to the intellect. 

As man can attain to certain truths which 
are without any mixture of fallacy, which when 
once he comprehends them he can never any 
more doubt, and which though thus absolute do 
not fetter his intellect but first give it the use 
of all its powers to the extent of those truths ; 
so he can conceive of an Intelligence in which 
all truth is thus without taint of error. Not 
only is such an Intelligence conceivable, it is 
necessary to conceive it, in order to complete the 
scientific induction of "a sphere of thought from 
which all limits are withdrawn," forced upon us 
by the demonstrations of the exact sciences. 2 

Thus do we reach the foundation for the faith 
in a moral government of the world, which it has 
been the uniform characteristic of religions to 

i Geo Boole, Laws of TJwvgJit, p. 410. 

2 The latest researches in natural science confirm the expres- 
sions of W. von Humboldt: "Das Streben der Natur ist auf 
etwas Unbeschranktes gerichtet." " Die Natur mit endlichen 
Mitteln miendliche Zwecke verfolgt." Ueber den GeschlechtS' 
unterschied, etc. 



112 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

assert ; but a government, as thus analytically 
reached, not easily corresponding with that which 
popular religion speaks of. Such feeble senti- 
ments as mercy, benevolence and effusive love, 
scarcely find place in this conception of the 
source of universal order. In this cosmical dust- 
cloud we inhabit, whose each speck is a sun, 
man's destiny plays a microscopic part. The 
vexed question whether ours is the best possible 
or the worst possible world, drops into startling 
insignificance. Religion has taught the abnega- 
tion of self; science is first to teach the humilia- 
tion of the race. Not for man's behoof were 
created the greater and the lesser lights, not for 
his deeds will the sun grow dark or the stars fall, 
not with any reference to his pains or pleasure 
was this universe spread upon the night. That 
Intelligence which pursues its own ends in this 
All, which sees from first to last the chain of 
causes which mould human action, measures not 
its purposes by man's halting sensations. Such 
an Intelligence is fitly described by the philos- 
opher-poet as one, 

" Wo die Gerechtigkeit so Wurzel schlaget, 
Und Schuld tmd Unschuld so erliaben waget 
Dass sie vertritt die Stelle aller Giite." 1 

In the scheme of the universe, pain and 
pleasure, truth and error, has each its fitness, 
and no single thought or act can be judged 

1 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Sonnette, " Hochste Gerechtig- 
keit." 



HIGHEST JUSTICE. 113 

apart from all others that ever have been and 
ever shall be. 

Such was the power that was contemplated 
by the Hebrew prophet, one from which all 
evil things and all good things come, and who 
disposes them all to the fulfilment of a final pur- 
pose: 

" I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light 
and create darkness ; I make peace and create evil." 

" I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end 
from the beginning, and from ancient times the things which 
are not yet done." l 

In a similar strain the ancient Aryan sang : — 

" This do I ask thee, tell me, O Ahura ! 
Who is he, working good, made the light and also darkness ? 
Who is he, working good, made the sleep as well as waking? 
Who the night, as well as noon and the morning ? ' ' 

And the reply came : 

" Know also this, O pure Zarathustra : through my wisdom, 
through which was the beginning of the world, so also its end 
shall be." 2 

Or as the Arabian apostle wrote, inspired by 
the same idea :- — 

"Praise the name of thy Lord, the Most High, 
Who hath created and balanced all things, 
Who hath fixed their destinies and guideth them." 

" The Revelation of this book is from the Mighty, the Wise. 
We have not created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is 
between them otherwise than with a purpose and for a settled 
term." 3 

1 Isaiah, xlv. 7 ; xlvi. 10. 

2 Khordah — avesta, Ormazd — Yasht, 33, and Yagna, 42. 

3 The Koran, Suras lxxxvii., xlvi. 



THE PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER. 



SUMMARY. 



Religion starts -with a Prayer. This is an appeal to the unknown, and is 
indispensable in religious thought. The apparent exceptions of Buddhism 
and Confucianism. 

All prayers relate to the fulfilment of a wish. At first its direct object 
is alone thought of. This so frequently fails that the indirect object rises 
into view. This stated to be the increase of the pleasurable emotions. The 
inadequacy of this statement. 

The answers to prayer. As a form of Expectant Attention, it exerts 
much subjective power. Can it influence external phenomena? It is possi- 
ble. Deeply religious minds reject both these answers, however. They 
claim the objective answer to be Inspiration. All religions unite in this claim. 

Inspirations have been contradictory. That is genuine which teaches 
truths which cannot be doubted concerning duty and deity. A certain 
mental condition favors the attainment of such truths. This simulated in 
religious entheasm. Examples. It is allied to the most intense intellectual 
action, but its steps remain unknown. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER. 

The foregoing analysis of the religious senti- 
ment results in finding it, even in its simplest 
forms, a product of complicated reasoning 
forced into action by some of the strongest 
emotions, and maintaining its position hide- 
feasibly through the limitations of the intellect. 
This it does, however, with a certain nobleness, 
for while it wraps the unknown in sacred 
mystery, it proclaims man one in nature with 
the Highest, by birthright a son of the gods, of 
an intelligence akin to theirs, and less than they 
only in degree. Through thus presenting at 
once his strength and his feebleness, his grand- 
eur and his degradation, religion goes beyond 
philosophy or utility in suggesting motives for 
exertion, stimuli to labor. This phase of it 
will now occupy us. 

The Religious Sentiment manifests itself in 
thought, in word and in act through the respect- 
ive media of the Prayer, the Myth and the Cult. 
The first embraces the personal relations of the 



118 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

individual to the object of his worship, the 
second expresses the opinions current in a com- 
munity about the nature and actions of that 
object, the last includes the symbols and cere- 
monies under and by which it is represented and 
propitiated. 

The first has the logical priority. Man 
cares nothing for God — can care nothing for 
him practically — except as an aid to the fulfil- 
ment of his desires, the satisfaction of his wants, 
as the " ground of his hopes." The root of the 
religious sentiment, I have said, is " a wish 
whose fruition depends upon unknown power." 
An appeal for aid to this unknown power, is the 
first form of prayer in its religious sense. It is 
not merely " the soul's sincere desire." This 
may well be and well directed, and yet not 
religious, as the devotion of the mathematician to 
the solution of an important problem. With 
the desire must be the earnest appeal to the un- 
known. A theological dictionary I have at hand 
almost correctly defines it as " a petition for 
spiritual or physical benefits which [we believe] 
we cannot obtain without divine co-operation." 
The words in brackets must be inserted to com- 
plete the definition. 

It need not be expressed in language. Rous- 
seau, in his Confessions, tells of a bishop who, in 
visiting his diocese, came across an old woman 
who was troubled because she could frame no 



SILENT PRAYER. 119 

prayer in words, but only cry, " Oh ! " " Good 
mother/' said the wise bishop, " Pray always so. 
Your prayers are better than ours." l 

A petition for assistance is, as I have said, one 
of its first forms ; but not its only one. The 
assistance asked in simple prayers is often 
nothing more than the neutrality of the gods, 
their non-interference ; "no preventing Prov- 
idence," as the expression is in our popular 
religion. Prayers of fear are of this kind : 

11 And they say, God be merciful, 
Who ne'er said, God be praised." 

Some of the Egyptian formulae even threaten 
the gods if they prevent success. 2 The wish 
accomplished, the prayer may be one of grati- 
tude, often enough of that kind described by La 
Rochefoucauld, of which a prominent element is 
" a lively sense of possible favors to come." 3 

Or again, self-abasement being so natural a 
form of flattery that to call ourselves " obedient 

1 The "silent worship " of the Quakers is defended by the 
writers of that sect, on the ground that prayer is " often very im- 
perfectly performed and sometimes materially interrupted by 
the use of words." Joseph John Gurney, The Distinguishing Views 
and Practice of the Society of Friends, p. 300. (London, 1834.) 

2 Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alien Volker, Bd. I. , s. 
162. 

3 The learned Bishop Butler, author of the Analogy of 
Religion, justly gives prominence to " our expectation of future 
benefits," as a reason for gratitude to God. Sermons, p. 155. 
(London, 1811.) 



120 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

and humble servants " of others, has passed 
into one of the commonest forms of address, 
many prayers are made up of similar expressions 
of humility and contrition, the votary calling 
himself a " miserable sinner " and a " vile worm," 
and on the other hand magnifying his Lord as 
greater than all other gods, mighty and helpful 
to those who assiduously worship him. 

In some form or other, as of petition, grati- 
tude or contrition, uttered in w r ords or confined 
to the aspirations of the so id, prayer is a ne- 
cessary factor in the religious life. It always 
has been, and it must be present. 

The exceptions which may be taken to this 
in religious systems are chiefly two, those sup- 
/ posed to have been founded by Buddha Sakya- 
muni and Confucius. 

It is undoubtedly correct that Buddha dis- 
couraged prayer. He permitted it at best in 
the inferior grades of discipleship. For himself, 
and all who reached his stage of culture, he pro- 
nounced it futile. 

But Buddha did not set out to teach a 
religion, but rather the inutility of all creeds. 
He struck shrewdly at the root of them by placing 
the highest condition of man in the total extin- 
guishment of desire. He bound the gods in 
fetters by establishing a theory of causal con- 
nection (the twelve Nidana) which does away 
with the necessity of ruling powers. He then 



BUDDHA'S TEACHING. 121 

swept both matter and spirit into unreality 
by establishing the canon of ignorance, that the 
highest knowledge is to know that nothing is : 
that there is neither being nor not-being, nor 
yet the becoming. After this wholesale icono- 
clasm the only possible object in life for the 
sage is the negative one of avoiding pain, which 
though as unreal as anything else, interferes 
with his meditations on its unreality. To this 
negative end the only aid he can expect is from 
other sages who have gone farther in self-culti- 
vation. Self, therefore, is the first, the collec- 
tive body of sages is the second, and the written 
instruction of Buddha is the third ; and these 
three are the only sources to which the con- 
sistent Buddhist looks for aid. 

This was Buddha's teaching. But it is not 
Buddhism as professed by the hundreds of mil- 
lions in Ceylon, in Thibet, China, Japan, and 
Siberia, who claim Sakyamuni under his names 
Buddha, the awakened, Tathagata, thus gone, or 
gone before, Siddartha, the accomplisher of the 
wish, and threescore and ten others of like pur- 
port, as their inspired teacher. Millions of 
saints, holy men, Buddhas, they believe, are 
ready to aid in every way the true believer, and 
incessant, constant prayer is, they maintain, the 
one efficient means to insure this aid. Repeti- 
tion, dinning the divinities and wearying them 
into answering, is their theory. Therefore 



122 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

they will repeat a short formula of four words 
(om mani padme hum — Om ! the jewel in the 
lotus, amen) thousands of times a day ; or, as 
they correctly think it not a whit more mechan- 
ical, they write it a million times on strips of 
paper, fasten it around a cylinder, attach this to 
a water or a wind- wheel, and thus sleeping or 
waking, at home or abroad, keep up a steady 
lire of prayer at the gods, which finally, they 
sanguinely hope, will bring them to submission. 
No sect has such entire confidence in the 
power of prayer as the Buddhists. The most 
pious Mahometan or Christian does not approach 
their faith. After all is said and done, the latter 
has room to doubt the efficacy of his prayer. 
It may be refused. Not so the Buddhists. They 
have a syllogism which covers the case com- 
pletely, as follows : — 

All things are in the power of the gods. 

The gods are in the power of prayer. 

Prayer is at the will of the saint. 

Therefore all things are in the power of the saint. 

The only reason that any prayer fails is that 
it is not repeated often enough — a statement 
difficult to refute. 

The case with Confucius was different. 1 No 
speculative dreamer, but a practical man, bent 

1 The expressions of Confucius' religious views may bs 
found in The Doctrine of the Mean, chaps, xiii., xvi., the Ana- 
lects, i. , 99, 100, vii., and in a few other passages of the canonical 
books. 



CONFUCIUS' TEACHING. 123 

on improving his fellows by teaching them self- 
reliance, industry, honesty, good feeling and the 
attainment of material comfort, he did not see 
in the religious systems and doctrines of his time 
any assistance to these ends. Therefore, like 
Socrates and many other men of ancient and 
modern times, without actually condemning the 
faiths around him, or absolutely neglecting some 
external respect to their usages, he taught his 
followers to turn away from religious topics and 
occupy themselves with subjects of immediate 
utility. For questions of duty, man, he taught, 
has a sufficient guide within himself. u What 
you do not like," he said, "when clone to your- 
self, do not to others." The wishes, he adds, 
should be limited to the attainable ; thus their 
disappointment can be avoided by a just estimate 
of one's own powers. He used to compare a 
wise man to an archer : " When the archer 
misses the target, he seeks for the cause of his 
failure within himself." He did not like to talk 
about spiritual beings. When asked whether 
the dead had knowledge, he replied : " There is 
no present urgency about the matter. If they 
have, you will know it for yourself in time." 
He did not deny the existence of unseen pow- 
ers ; on the contrary, he said : " The Tcwei shin 
(the most general term for supernatural beings) 
enter into all things, and there is nothing with- 
out them; " but he added, " We look for them 



121 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

and do not see them ; we listen, but do not hear 
them." In speaking of deity, he dropped the 
personal syllable (te) and only spoke of heaven, 
in the indefinite sense. Such was this extraor- 
dinary man. The utilitarian theory, what we 
call the common sense view of life, was never 
better taught. But his doctrine is not a re- 
ligion. His followers erect temples, and from 
filial respect pay the usual honors to their an- 
cestors, as Confucius himself did. But they 
ignore religious observances, strictly so-called. 

These examples, therefore, do not at all con- 
flict with the general statement that no religion 
can exist without prayer. On the contrary, it 
is the native expression of the religious senti- 
ment, that to which we must look for its most 
hidden meaning. The thoughtful Novalis, whose 
meditations are so rich in reflections on the re- 
ligious nature of man, well said : " Prayer is to 
religion what thought is to philosophy. To 
pray is to make religion. The religious sense 
prays with like necessity that the reason thinks." 

Whatever the form of the prayer, it has 
direct or indirect relation to the accomplishment 
of a wish. David prays to the Lord as the one 
who " satisfies the desire of every living thing," 
who " will fulfil the desire of them that fear 
him," and it is with the like faith that the heart 
of every votary is stirred when he approaches in 
prayer the divinity he adores. 



THE AR YAN PRA YER. 125 

Widely various are the things wished for. 
Their character is the test of religions. In prim- 
itive faiths and in uncultivated minds, prayers 
are confined to the nearest material advantages ; 
they are directed to the attainment of food, of 
victory in combat, of safety in danger, of per- 
sonal prosperity. They may all be summed up 
in a line of one which occurs in the Rig V eda : 
" Lord Yaruna ! Grant that we may prosper 
in getting and keeping I 11 

Beyond this point of u getting and keeping," 
few primitive prayers take us. Those of the 
American Indians, as I have elsewhere shown, re- 
mained in this stage among the savage tribes, and 
rose above it only in the civilized states of 
Mexico and Peru. Prayers for health, for 
plenteous harvests, for safe voyages and the like 
are of this nature, though from their familiarity 
to us they seem less crude than the simple- 
hearted petition of the old Aryan, which I have 
quoted. They mean the same. 

The more thoughtful votaries of the higher 
forms of religion have, however, frequently 
drawn the distinction between the direct and 
indirect fulfilment of the wish. An abundant 
harvest, restoration to health, or a victory in 
battle is the object of our hopes, not in itself, 
but for its results upon ourselves. These, in 
their final expression, can mean nothing else than 
agreeable sensations and pleasurable emotions. 



126 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

These, therefore, are the real though indirect 
objects of such prayers; often unconsciously so, 
because the ordinary devotee has little capacity 
and less inclination to analyze the nature of his 
religious feelings. 

A recent writer, Mr. Hodgson, has said : 
u The real answer to prayer is the increase of 
the joyful emotions, the decrease of the painful 
ones." 1 It would seem a simpler plan to make 
this directly the purport of our petitions ; but 
to the modern mind this naked simplicity would 
be distasteful. 

Nor is the ordinary supplicant willing to look 
so far. The direct, not the indirect object of the 
wish, is what he wants. The lazzarone of Naples 
prays to his patron saint to favor his choice of a 
lottery ticket ; if it turn out an unlucky number 
he will take the little leaden image of the saint 
from his pocket, revile it, spit on it, and trample 
it in the mud. Another man, when his prayer 
for success is not followed by victory, sends gifts 
to the church, flogs himself in public and fasts. 
Xenophon gives us in his Economics the prayer 
of a pious Athenian of his time, in the person of 
Ischomachus. " I seek to obtain," says the latter, 
" from the gods by just prayers, strength and 
health, the respect of the community, the love 
of my friends, an honorable termination to 
my combats, and riches, the fruit of honest in- 

1 An Inquiry into the Theory of Practice, p. 330. 



CLASSICAL PRAYERS. 127 

dustry." Xenophon evidently considered these 
appropriate objects for prayer, and from the 
petitions in many recent manuals of devotion, 
I should suppose most Christians of to-day would 
not see in them anything inappropriate. 

In spite of the effort that has been made by 
Professor Creuzer 1 to show that the classical 
nations rose to a higher use of prayer, one which 
made spiritual growth in the better sense of the 
phrase its main end ; I think such instances were 
confined to single philosophers and poets. They do 
not represent the prayers of the average votary. 
Then and now he, as a rule, has little or no idea 
of any other answer to his prayer than the at- 
tainment of his wish. 

As such petitions, however, more frequently 
fail than succeed in their direct object, and as 
the alternative of considering them impotent is 
not open to the votary, some other explanation 
of their failure was taught in very early day . 
At first, it was that the god was angered, and re- 
fused the petition out of revenge. Later, the 
indirect purpose of such a prayer asserted itself 

1 Si/mbolik und Mythologie der - Alten Vollcer. Bd. I., ss. 165, 
sqq. One of the most favorable examples (not mentioned by 
Creuzer) is the formula with which Apollonius of Tyana closed 
every prayer and gave as the summary of all : " Give me, ye 
Gods, what I deserve" — Aoi^te juoi ra ocpertio^eva. The Chris- 
tian's comment on this would be in the words of Hamlet's reply 
to Polom'us : " God's bodkin, man ! use every man after his 
desert and who should 'scape whipping ? " 



128 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

more clearly, and aided by a nobler conception 
of Divinity, suggested that the refusal of the 
lower is a preparation for a higher reward. 
Children, in well-ordered households, are fre- 
quently refused by parents who love them well ; 
this present analogy was early seized to explain 
the failure of prayer. Unquestioning submis- 
sion to the divine will was inculcated. Some 
even went so far as to think it improper to de- 
fine any wish at all, and subsumed all prayer 
under the one formula, " Thy will be done." 
Such was the teaching; of St. Augustine, whose 
favorite prayer was Da quodjubes, etjube quod 
vis, a phrase much criticized by Pelagius and 
others of his time as too quietistic. 1 The usual 
Christian doctrine of resignation proceeds in 
theory to this extent. Such a notion of the pur- 
pose of prayer leads to a cheerful acceptance of 
the effects of physical laws, effects which an 
enlightened religious mind never asks to be 
altered in its favor, for the promises and aims 
of religion should be wholly outside the arena of 
their operation. The ideal prayer has quite 
other objects than to work material changes. 

To say, as does Mr. Hodgson, that its aim is 
the increase of the joyful emotions is far from 

1 Aurelii Augustini, Be Bono Perseverantice, cap. xx. 
Comte remarks ' ' Depuis St. Augustin toutes les ames pures 
ont de plus en plus senti, atravers l'egoisme Chret'en, queprier 
pent n'etre pas demander." Systeme de Politique Positive, I., p. 
260. Popular Protestantism has retrograded in this respect. 



PRAYER DEFINED. 129 

sufficient. The same may be said of most 
human effort, the effort to make money, for in- 
stance. The indirect object of money-making 
is also the increase of the agreeable feelings. 
The similarity of purpose might lead to a belief 
that the aims of religion and business are iden- 
tical. 

Before we can fully decide on what, in the 
specifically religious sense of the word, is the 
answer to prayer, we should inquire as a matter 
of fact what effect it actually exerts, and to do 
this we should understand what it is as a psy- 
chological process. The reply to this is that 
prayer, in its psychological definition, is a form 
of Expectant Attention. It is always urged by 
religious teachers that it must be very earnest and 
continuous to be successful. " Importunity is of 
the essence of successful prayer," says Canon 
Liddon in a recent sermon. In the New Tes- 
tament it is likened to a constant knocking: at 
a door ; and by a curious parity of thought the 
Chinese character for prayer is composed of the 
signs for a spirit and an axe or hammer. 1 
We must " keep hammering " as a colloquial 
phrase has it. Strong belief is also required. 
To pray with faith we must expect with confi- 
dence. 

1 Plath, Die Religion unci Cult us der alten Chineser, s. 836. 
This author observes that the Chinese prayers are confined to tem- 
poral benefits only, and are all either prayers of petition or grat- 
itude. Prayers of contrition are unknown. 



130 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Now that such a condition of expectant at- 
tention, prolonged and earnest, will have a very 
powerful subjective effect, no one acquainted 
with the functions of the human economy can 
doubt. u Any state of the body," observes 
the physiologist Miiller, " expected with certain 
confidence is very prone to ensue." A pill of 
bread-crumbs, which the patient supposes to 
contain a powerful cathartic, will often produce 
copious evacuations. No one who studies the 
history of medicine can question that scrof- 
ulous swellings and ulcerations were cured by 
the royal touch, that paralytics have regained the 
use of their limbs by touching the relics of the 
saints, and that in many countries beside Judea 
the lajdng on of hands and the words of a holy 
man have made issues to heal and the lame to walk. 1 

Such effects are not disputed by physicians as 
probable results of prayer or faith considered as 
expectant attention. The stigmata of St. Fran- 
cis d'Assisi are more than paralleled by those 
of Louise Lateau, now living at Bois d'Haine in 
Belgium, whose hands, feet and side bleed every 
Friday like those of Christ on the cross. A 
commission of medical men after the most care- 
ful precautions against deception attributed 
these hemorrhages to the effect of expectation 

1 Numerous examples can be found in medical text books, 
for instance in Dr.Tuke's, The Influence of the Mind on the Body. 
London, 1873. 



THE POWER OF BELIEF. 131 

(prayer) vastly increased in force by repetition. 1 
If human testimony is worth anything, the cures 
of Porte Roy ale are not open to dispute. 2 

The mental consequences of a prayerful con- 
dition of mind are to inspire patience under 
afflictions, hope in adversity, courage in the 
presence of danger and a calm confidence in the 
face of death itself. How mightily such in- 
fluences have worked in history is shown in every 
religious war, and in the lives of the martyrs of 
all faiths. It matters not what they believed, so 
only that they believed it thoroughly, and the 
gates of Hades could not prevail against them. 

No one will question that these various and 
momentous results are the legitimate effects or 
answers to prayers. But whether prayer can in- 
fluence the working of the material forces ex- 
ternal to the individual is a disputed point. If 
it cannot in some way do this, prayers for rain, 
for harvests, for safety at sea, for restoration to 
health, for delivery from grasshoppers 3 and 

1 The commission appointed by the Royal Academy of Med- 
icine of Belgium on Louise Lateau reported in March, 1875, and 
most of the medical periodicals of that year contain abstracts of 
its paper. 

2 They may be found in the life of Pascal, written by his 
sister, and in many other works of the time. 

3 It is worthy of note, as an exponent of the condition of 
religious thought in 1875, that in May of that year the Gover- 
nor of the State of Missouri appointed by official proclamat'on 
a day of prayer to check the advance of the grasshoppers. He 
should also have requested the clergy to pronounce the ban of 



132 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

pestilence, whether for our own benefit or others, 
are hardly worth reciting. A physicist expresses 
the one opinion in these words : " Science asserts 
that without a disturbance of natural law, quite 
as serious as the stoppage of an eclipse or the 
rolling of the St. Lawrence up the Falls of 
Niagara, no act of humiliation, individual or 
national, could call one shower from heaven or 
deflect toward us a single beam of the sun." 
" Assuming the efficacy of free prayer to pro- 
duce changes in external nature, it necessarily 
follows that natural laws are more or less at the 
mercy of man's volition." 1 

This authoritative statement, much discussed 
at the time it was published, does not in fact 
express the assertion of science. To the scientific 
apprehension, man's volitions and his prayers are 
states of emotion, inseparably connected in their 
manifestations with changes in his cerebral 
structure, with relative elevation of temperature, 
and with the elimination of oxygen and phos- 
phorus, in other words with chemico- vital phe- 
nomena and the transformation of force. Science 
also adds that there is a constant interaction of 
all force, and it is not prepared to deny that the 
force expended by a national or individual 
prayer may become a co-operating cause in 

the Church against them, as the Bishop of Rheims did in the 
ninth century. 

1 Tyndall, On Prayer and Natural Law, 1872. 



PRAYER AND FORCE. 133 

the material change asked for, even if the latter 
be a rain shower. This would not affect a 
natural law but only its operation, and that 
much every act of our life does. The fact that 
persistency and earnestness in prayer — i. e., the 
increased development of force — add to its 
efficacy,, would accord with such a scientific 
view. It would further be very materially 
corroborated by the accepted doctrine of the 
orders of force. A unit of electrical or magnetic 
force equals many of the force of gravity ; a 
number of electrical units are required to make 
one of chemical force; and chemico-vital or 
" metabolic" force is still higher; whereas 
thought regarded as a form of force must be 
vastly beyond this again. 

To render a loadstone, which lifts filings of 
iron by its magnetic force, capable of doing the 
same by the force of gravity, its density would 
have to be increased more than a thousand 
million times. All forces differ in like degree. 
Professor Faraday calculated that the force 
latent in the chemical composition of one drop 
of water, equals that manifested in an average 
thunderstorm. In our limited knowledge of the 
relation of forces therefore, a scientific man is 
rash to deny that the chemico-vital forces set 
loose by an earnest prayer may affect the oper- 
ation of natural laws outside the body as they 
confessedly do in it. 



134 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Experience alone can decide such a question, 
and I for one, from theory and from observation, 
believe in the material efficacy of prayer. In a 
certain percentage of the cases where the wished- 
for material result followed, the physical force of 
the active cerebral action has seemed to me a 
co-operating cause. A physician can observe 
this to best advantage in the sickness of children, 
as they are free from subjective bias, their con- 
stitutions are delicately susceptible, and the 
prayers for them are in their immediate vicinity 
and very earnest. 

But this admission after all is a barren one 
to the truly devout mind. The effect gained 
does not depend on the God to whom the prayer 
is offered. Blind physical laws bring it about, 
and any event that comes through their compul- 
sive force is gelded of its power to fecundate the 
germs of the better religious life. The knowl- 
edge of this would paralyze faith. 

Further to attenuate the value of my admission, 
another consideration arises, this time prompted 
not by speculative criticism, but by reverence 
itself. A scholar whom I have already quoted 
justly observes : " Whenever we prefer a request 
as a means of obtaining what we wish for, we 
are not praying in the religious sense of the 
term." * Or, as a recent theologian puts the same 

1 S. M. Hodgson, An Inquiry into the Theory of Practice, 
pp. 329, 330. 



WORDS OF ST JOHN. 135 

idea : " Every true prayer prays to be refused, 
if the granting of it would be hurtful to us or 
subversive of God's glory." 1 The real answer 
to prayer can never be an event or occurrence. 
Only in moments of spiritual weakness and 
obscured vision, when governed by his emotions 
or sensations, will the reverent soul ask a definite 
transaction, a modification in the operation of 
natural laws, still less such vulgar objects as 
victory, wealth or health. 

The prayer of faith finds its only true ob- 
jective answer in itself, in accepting whatever 
befalls as the revelation of the will of God as 
to what is best. This temper of mind as the 
real meaning of prayer was beautifully set forth 
by St. John : "If we know that he hear us, 
whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the 
petitions that we desired of him." 2 

But this solution of the problem does not go 
far enough. Prayer is claimed to have a posi- 
tive effect on the mind other than resignation. 
Joyful emotions are its fruits, spiritual enlight- 
enment its reward. These are more than cheer- 
ful acquiescence, nor can the latter come from 
objects of sense. 

1 The Rev. Dr. Thomas K. Conrad, Thoughts on Prayer, p. 
54: New York, 1875. 

2 I. John, v. 15. " There are millions of prayers," says 
Richard Baxter, "that will all be found answered at death 
and judgment, which we know not to be answered any way but 
by believing it." A Christian Directory, Part II. chap, xxiii. 



136 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

The most eminent teachers agree in banish- 
ing material pleasure and prosperity from holy 
desires. They are of one mind in warning 
against what the world and the flesh can offer, 
against the pursuit of riches, power and lust. 
Many counsel poverty and deliberate renuncia- 
tion of all such things. Nor is the happiness 
they talk of that which the pursuit of intellect- 
ual truth brings. This, indeed, confers joy, of 
which whoever has tasted will not hastily re- 
turn to the fleshpots of the senses, but it is 
easy to see that it is not religious. Prayer and 
veneration have not a part in it. Great joy is 
likewise given by the exercise of the imagination 
when stirred by art in some of its varied forms, 
and a joy more nearly allied to religion than is 
that of scientific investigation. But the esthetic 
emotions are well defined, and are distinctly 
apart from those concerned with the religious 
sentiment. Their most complete satisfaction 
rather excludes than encourages pious medita- 
tions. . That which prayer ought to seek outside 
of itself is different from all of these, its dower 
must be divine. 

We need not look long for it. Though 
hidden from the wise, it has ever been familiar 
to the unlearned. Man has never been in doubt 
as to what it is. He has been only too willing 
to believe he has received it. 

In barbarism and civilization, in the old and 



THE HIGHEST ANSWER. 137 

new worlds, the final answer to prayer has ever 
been acknowledged to be inspiration, revela- 
tion, the thought of God made clear to the 
mind of man, the mystical hypostasis through 
which the ideas of the human coincide with 
those of universal Intelligence. This is what 
the Pythian priestess, the Siberian shaman, the 
Koman sibyl, the Voluspan prophetess, the In- 
dian medicine-man, all claimed in various degrees 
along with the Hebrew seers and the Mahometan 
teacher. 1 

The truth, the last and absolute truth, is 
what is everywhere recognized as, if not the 
only, at least the completest, the highest answer 
to prayer. " Where I found the truth, there I 
found my God, himself the truth, " says St. Au- 
gustine ; and in a prayer by St. Chrysostom, 
the " Golden Mouth," unsurpassed in its grand 
simplicity, it is said : " Almighty Father, * * 
grant us in this world knowledge of Thy truth, 
and in the world to come, life everlasting." 
Never has the loftiest purpose of prayer been 
more completely stated. This it was that had 
been promised them by Him, to whom they look- 
ed as an Intercessor for their petitions, who had 
said : " I will send unto you the Comforter. * # 

1 " So wie das Gebetein Hauptwurzel alter Lehre war, sowar 
das Deuten und Offenbaren ihre urspriingliche Form." Creuzer, 
Symbolik und Mytliologie der alien Volker, Bd. I., s. 10. It were 
more accurate to say that divination is the answer to, rather 
than a form of prayer. 



138 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

When he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will 
guide you unto all truth." 

The belief that this answer is at all times at- 
tainable has always been recognized by the 
Christian Church, Apostolic, Catholic, and Pro- 
testant. Baptism was called by the Greek fathers, 
" enlightenment " (Iwr:^^ as by it the be- 
liever received the spirit of truth. The Roman- 
ist, in the dogma of infallibility, proclaims the 
perpetual inspiration of a living man ; the Pro- 
testant Churches in many creeds and doctrinal 
works extend a substantial infallibility to all 
true believers, at least to the extent that they 
can be inspired to recognize, if not to receive 
divine verity. 

The Gallican Confession of Faith, adopted in 
1561, rests the principal evidence of the truth 
of the Scriptures on " le temoignage et Vinte- 
rieure persuasion du Saint Esprit, " and the 
Westminster Confession on " the inward work 
of the holy spirit." The Society of Friends 
maintain it as " a leading principle, that the 
work of the Holy Spirit in the soul is not only 
immediate and direct, but perceptible ; " that it 
imparts truth " without any mixture of error; " 
and thus is something quite distinct from con- 
science, which is common to the race, while this 
"inward light" is given only to the favored of 
God. 1 

1 Joseph John Gurney, The Distinguishing Vieivs and Practices 



INSPIRATION. 139 

The non-juror, William Law, emphatically 
says : " The Christian that rejects the necessity 
of immediate divine inspiration, pleads the whole 
cause of infidelity ; he has nothing to prove the 
goodness of his own Christianity, but that which 
equally proves to the Deist the goodness of his 
infidelity." 1 That by prayer the path of duty 
will be made clear, is a universal doctrine. 

The extent to which the gift of inspiration 
is supposed to be granted is largely a matter of 
church government. Where authority prevails, 
it is apt to be confined to those in power. 
Where religion is regarded as chiefly sub- 
jective and individual, it is conceded that any 
pious votary may become the receptacle of such 
special light. 

Experience, however, has too often shown 
that inspiration teaches such contradictory doc- 
trines that they are incompatible with any 
standard. The indefinite splitting of Protestant 
sects has convinced all clear thinkers that the 
claim of the early Confessions to a divinely given 



of the Society of Friends, pp. 58, 59, 76, 73. An easy conse- 
quence of this view was to place the decrees of the internal 
monitor above the written word. This was advocated mainly 
by Elias Hicks, who expressed his doctrine in the words : " As 
no spring can rise higher than its fountain, so likewise the 
Scriptures can only direct to the fountain whence they origin- 
ated—the Spirit of Truth." Letters of Elias Hicks, p. 228 
(Phila., .1861). 

1 Address to the Clergy, p. 67. 



/ 



140 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

power of distinguishing the true from the false 
has been a mistaken supposition. As a proof to 
an unbeliever, such a gift could avail nothing ; 
and as evidence to one's own mind, it can only be 
accepted by those who deliberately shut their 
eyes to the innumerable contradictions it offers. 1 
While, therefore, in this, if anywhere, we per- 
ceive the only at once fit and definite answer to 
prayer, and find that this is acknowledged hy all 
faiths, from the savage to the Christian, it would 
seem that this answer is a fallacious and futile 
one. The teachings of inspiration are infinitely 
discrepant and contradictory, and often plainly 
world-wide from the truth they pretend to em- 
body. The case seems hopeless ; yet, as religion 
of any kind without prayer is empty, there has 
been a proper unwillingness to adopt the con- 
clusion just stated. 

The distinction has been made that " the in- 
spiration of the Christian is altogether subject- 
ive, and directed to the moral improvement of 
the individual," 2 not to facts of history or ques- 
tions of science, even exegetic science. The 
term illumination has been preferred for it, and 
while it is still defined as "a spiritual intelli- 
gence which brings truth within the range of 

1 See an intelligent note on this subject in the Rev. Wm. 
Lee's vrork, entitled The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, pp. 
4-4,47 (London and Xew York, 1857). 

2 Rev. William Lee, u. s., p. 243. 



BELIEF. Ill 

mental apprehension by a kind of intuition," 1 
this truth has reference only to immediate mat- 
ters of individual faith and practice. The Ro- 
man church allows more latitude than this, as it 
sanctions revelations concerning events, but not 
concerning doctrines. 2 

Looked at narrowly, the advantage which 
inspiration has been to religions has not so 
much depended on what it taught, as on its 
strength as a psychological motive power. As 
a general mental phenomenon it does not so 
much concern knowledge as belief ; its province 
is to teach faith rather than facts. No convic- 
tion can equal that which arises from an asser- 
tion of God directly to ourselves. The force of 
the argument lies not in the question whether 
he did address us, but whether we believe he 
did. As a stimulus to action, prayer thus rises 
to a prime power. 

Belief is considered by Professor Bain and 
his school to be the ultimate postulate, the final 
ground of intellection. It is of the utmost im- 
portance, however, — and this Professor Bain 
fails to do — to distinguish between two kinds of 
belief. There are men who believe and others 
who disbelieve the Koran or the Bible ; I can 



1 Blunt, Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theolor/?/, s. v. 

2 There is a carefully written essay on the views of the Ro- 
mish Church on this subject, preceding The Revelations of Saint 
Brigida (N. Y. 1875). 



142 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

accept or reject the historical existence of King 
Arthur or Napoleon ; but, if I understand them, 
I cannot disbelieve the demonstrations of Eu- 
clid, nor the relations of subject and object, 
nor the formal laws of thought. No sane man, 
acquainted with the properties of numbers, can 
believe that twice three are ten, or that a thing 
can be thought as other than itself. These 
truths that " we cannot help believing," I have 
denned in the first chapter as absolute truths. 
They do not come to us through testimony and 
induction, but through a process variously called 
u immediate perception," " apprehension," or 
"intuition," a process long known but never 
satisfactorily explained. 

All such truths are analytic, that is, they are 
true, not merely for a given time or place, but 
at all times and places conceivable, or, time and 
space out of the question, they still remain for- 
mally true. Of course, therefore, they cannot 
refer to historic occurrences nor phenomena. 
The modern position, that truth lies in facts, 
must be forsaken, and with the ancients, we 
must place it in ideas. 

If we define inspiration as that condition of 
mind which is in the highest degree sensitive 
to the presence of such truth, we have of it the 
only worthy idea which it is possible to frame. 
The object of scientific investigation is to reach 
a truth which can neither be denied nor doubt- 



IXSP1RA TION DEFINED. 143 

eel. If religion is willing to content itself with 
any lower form of truth, it cannot support its 
claims to respect, let alone reverence. 

It may be said that the subjects with which 
the religious sentiment concerns itself are not 
such as are capable of this absolute expression. 
This is, however, disclaimed by all great re- 
formers, and by none more emphatically than 
by him who said : " Heaven and earth shall pass 
away, but my statements (loyot) shall not pass 
away." There is clear reference here to abso- 
lute truths. If what we know of God, duty and 
life, is not capable of expression except in his- 
toric narrative and synthetic terms, the sooner 
we drop their consideration the better. That 
form sufficed for a time, but can no longer, 
when a higher is generally known. As the 
mathematical surpasses the historic truth, so the 
former is in turn transcended by the purely 
logical, and in this, if anywhere, religion must 
rest its claims for recognition. Here is the 
arena of the theology of the future, not in the 
decrees of councils, nor in the records of past 
time. 

Inspiration, in its religious sense, we may, 
therefore, define to be that condition of mind in 
which the truths relating to deity and duty be- 
come in whole or in part the subjects of im- 
mediate perception. 

That such a condition is possible will be 



144 THE BE LI G 10 US SEXTIMEXT. 

granted. Every reformer who has made a per- 
manent betterment in the religion of his time 
has possessed it in some degree. He who first 
conceived the Kosmos under logical unity as an 
orderly whole, had it in singular power; so too 
had he who looking into the mind became aware 
of its purposive laws which are the everlasting 
warrants of duty. Some nations have possessed 
it in remarkable fulness, none more so than the 
descendants of Abraham, from himself, who left 
his kindred and his father's house at the word 
of God, through many eminent seers clown to 
Sphioza, who likewise forsook his tribe to obey 
the inspirations vouchsafed him ; surpassing them 
all, Jesus of Xazareth, to whose mind, as he waxed 
in wisdom, the truth unfolded itself in such sur- 
passing clearness that neither his immediate dis- 
ciples nor any generations since have fathomed 
all the significance of his words. 

Such minds do not need development and 
organic transmission of thought to enrich their 
stores. We may suppose the organization of 
then brains to be so perfect that their functions are 
alwaj's accordant with true reasoning, so self- 
prompting, that a hint of the problem is all they 
ask to arrive at its demonstration. Blaise Pascal, 
when a boy of twelve, whose education had been 
carefully restrained, once asked his father what is 
geometry. The latter replied that it is a method 
devised to draw figures correctly, but forbade 



THE PURSUIT OF INSPIRATION. 145 

any further inquiry about it. On this hint Pascal, 
by himself, unassisted, without so much as know- 
ing the name of a line or circle, reached in a 
few weeks to the demonstration of the thirty- 
second problem of the first book of Euclid ! Is 
it not possible for a mind equally productive of 
religious truth to surpass with no less ease its 
age on such subjects? 

As what Newton so well called " patient 
thought," constant application, prolonged atten- 
tion, is the means on which even great minds 
must rely in order to reach the sempiternal ver- 
ities of science, so earnest continued prayer is 
that which all teachers prescribe as the only 
avenue to inspiration in its religious sense. 
While this may be conceded, collaterals of the 
prayer have too often been made to appear 
trivial and ridiculous. 

In the pursuit of inspiration the methods ob- 
served present an interesting similarity. The 
votary who aspires to a communion with the god, 
shuts himself out from the distraction of social 
intercourse and the disturbing allurements of 
the senses. In the solitude of the forest or the 
cell,with complete bodily inaction, he gives himself 
to fasting and devotion, to a concentration of 
all his mind on the one object of his wish, the 
expected revelation. Waking and sleeping he 
banishes all other topics of thought, perhaps by 

an incessant repetition of a formula, until at last 

10 



U6 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

the moment comes, as it surely will come in some 
access of hallucination, furor or ecstasy, the un- 
failing accompaniments of excessive mental strain, 
when the mist seems to roll away from the mor- 
tal vision, the inimical powers which darkened 
the mind are baffled, and the word of the Creator 
makes itself articulate to the creature. 

Take any connected account of the reve- 
lation of the divine will, and this history is 
substantially the same. It differs but little 
whether told of Buddha Sakyamuni, the royal 
seer of Kapilavastu, or by Catherine Wabose, the 
Chipeway squaw, 1 concerning the Revelations of 
St. Gertrude of Nivelles or of Saint Brigida, or 
in the homely language of the cobbler George 
Fox. 

For six years did Sakyamuni wander in the 
forest, practising the mortifications of the flesh 
and combatting the temptations of the devil,before 
the final night when, after overcoming the crown- 
ing enticements of beauty, power and wealth, at 
a certain moment he became the " awakened," 
and knew himself in all his previous births, and 
with that knowledge soared above the "divine 
illusion " of existence. In the cave of Hari, Mo- 
hammed fasted and prayed until " the night of 

1 Chusco or Catherine Wabose, " the prophetess of Chegoi- 
megon," has left a full and psychologically most valuable account 
of her inspiration. It is published in Schoolcraft's History and 
Statistics of the Indian Tribes, Vol. I., p. 330, sqq. 



THE " OPENINGS" OF FOX. 147 

the divine decisions ; " then he saw the angel 
Gabriel approach and inspire him : 

" A revelation was revealed to him : 
One terrible in power taught it him, 
Endowed with wisdom. With firm step stood he, 
There, where the horizon is highest, 
Then came he near and nearer, 
A matter of two bowshots or closer, 
And he revealed to his servant a revelation; 
He has falsified not what he saw." 1 

With not dissimilar preparation did George 
Fox seek the "openings " which revealed to him 
the hollowness of the Christianity of his day, in 
contrast to the truth he found. In his Journal 
he records that for months he "fasted much, 
walked around in solitary places, and sate in 
hollow trees and lonesome places, and frequently 
in the night walked mournfully about." When 
the word of truth came to him it was of a sud- 
den, " through the immediate opening of the 
invisible spirit." Then a new life commenced 
for him : " Now was I come up in Spirit through 
the flaming sword into the Paradise of God. All 
things were new : all the creation gave another 
smell unto me than before." The healing virtues 
of all herbs were straightway made known to 
him, and the needful truths about the kingdom of 
God. 2 

i The Koran, Sura liii. This is in date one of the ear- 
liest suras. 

2 The Journal of George Fox, pp. 59, 67, 69. 



148 THE RELIGIOUS SEX TIME NT. 

These are portraitures of the condition of 
entheasm. Its lineaments are the same, find it 
"where we may. 

How is this similarity to be explained ? Is 
it that this alleged inspiration is always but the 
dream of a half-crazed brain ? The deep and 
real truths it has now and then revealed, the 
noble results it has occasionally achieved, do not 
allow this view. A more worthy explanation is 
at hand. 

These preliminaries of inspiration are in fact 
but a parody, sometimes a caricature, of the 
most intense intellectual action as shown in the 
efforts of creative thought. The physiological 
characteristics of such mental episodes indicate a 
lowering of the animal life, the respiration is 
faint and slow, the pulse loses in force and fre- 
quency, the nerves of special sense are almost 
inhibited, the eye is fixed and records no impres- 
sion, the ear registers no sound, necessary motions 
are performed unconsciously, the condition ap- 
proaches that of trance. There is also an alarm- 
ing similarity at times between the action of ge- 
nius and of madness, as is well known to alienists. 

When the creative thought appears, it does so 
suddenly; it breaks upon the mind when partly 
enamored with something else as an instantaneous 
flash, apparently out of connection with previous 
efforts. This is the history of all great discove- 
ries, and it has been abundantly illustrated from 



THE PRODUCT OF INSPIRATION. 149 

the lives of inventors, artists, poets and mathe- 
maticians. The links of such a mental procedure 
we do not know. " The product of inspiration, 
genius, is incomprehensible to itself. Its activ- 
ity proceeds on no beaten track, and we seek in 
vain to trace its footsteps. There is no warrant 
for the value of its efforts. This it can alone 
secure through voluntary submission to law. All 
its powers are centred in the energy of produc- 
tion, and none is left for idle watching of the 
process." 1 

The prevalent theory of the day is that 
this mental action is one essentially hidden 
from the mind itself. The name " unconscious 
cerebration" has been proposed for it by Dr. 
Carpenter, and he has amply and ably illustra- 
ted its peculiarities. But his theory has encoun- 
tered just criticism, and I am persuaded does not 
meet the requirements of the case. Whether at 
such moments the mind actually receives some 
impulse from without, as is the religious theory, 
or, as science more willingly teaches, certain 
associations are more easily achieved when 
the mind is partially engaged with other trains 
of ideas, we cannot be sure. We can only say 
of it, in the words of Dr. Henry Maudsley, the 
result " is truly an inspiration, coming we know 
not whence." Whatever it is, we recognize in 

1 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Gesammelte WerJce, Bd. iv., s. 



150 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

it the original of that of which religious hallu- 
cination is the counterfeit presentment. So 
similar are the processes that their liability to be- 
confounded has been expressly guarded against. 1 

The prevalence of such caricatures does not 
prove the absence of the sterling article. They 
rather show that the mind is conscious of the 
possibility of reaching a frame or mood in which 
it perceives what it seeks, immediately and cor- 
rectly. Buddhism distinctly asserts this to be 
the condition of " the stage of intuitive in- 
sight ; " and Protestant Christianity commenced 
with the same opinion. Every prayer for guid- 
ance in the path of duty assumes it. The error 
is in applying such a method where it is incom- 
patible, to facts of history and the phenomena 
of physical force. Confined to the realm of 
ideas, to which alone the norm of the true and 
untrue is applicable, there is no valid evidence 
against, and many theoretical reasons for, re- 
specting prayer as a fit psychological preparation 
for those obscure and unconscious processes, 
through which the mind accomplishes its best 
work. 

The intellect, exalted by dwelling upon the 
sublimest subjects of thought, warmed into 

1 In his treatise De Veritate, itself the subject, as its author 
thought, of a special revelation, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 
gives as one of the earmarks of a real revelation : "lit afflatum 
Divini numinis sentias, ita enim internae Facultatum circa verita- 
tem operationes a revelationibus externis distinguuntur." p. 226. 



WIIA T 1NSPIRA TION TEACHES. 151 

highest activity by the flames of devotion, spurn- 
ing as sterile and vain the offers of time and the 
enticements of sense, may certainly be then in 
the mood fittest to achieve its greatest victories. 
But no narrowed heaven must cloud it, no man- 
made god obstruct its gaze. Free from supersti- 
tion and prejudice, it must be ready to follow 
wherever the voice of reason shall lead it. All 
inspired men have commenced by freeing them- 
selves from inherited forms of belief in order 
that with undiverted attention they might listen 
to the promptings of the divinity within their 
souls. One of the greatest of them and one the 
most free from the charge of prejudice, has said 
that to this end prayer is the means. 1 

He who believes that the ultimate truth is 
commensurate with reason, finds no stumbling- 
block in the doctrine that there may be laws 
through whose action inspiration is the enlight- 
enment of mind as it exists in man, by mind as 
it underlies the motions which make up matter. 
The truth thus reached is not the formulae of 
the Calculus, nor the verbiage of the Dialectic, 
still less the events of history, but that which 
gives what validity they have to all of these, and 
moreover imparts to the will and the conscience 
their power to govern conduct. 

1 Spinoza, Espistolce et Responsionnes, Ep. xxxiv. 



THE MYTH AND THE MYTHICAL CYCLES. 



SUMMARY. 



Myths are inspirations concerning the Unknown. Science treats them as 
apperceptions of the relations of man and natnre. Moments of their growth, 
as treated hy mythological science. Their similar forms, explained variously, 
the topic of the philosophy of mythology. The ante-mythical period. 
Myths have centred chiefly around three subjects, each giving rise to a 
Mythical Cycle. 

I. The Epochs of Nature. 

The idea of Time led to the myth of a creation. This starting the ques- 
tion, What was going on before creation? recourse was had to the myth of 
recurrent epochs. The last epoch gave origin to the Flood Myths ; the com- 
ing one to that of the Day of Judgment. 

II. The Paradise lost and to he re-gained. 

To man, the past and the future are ever better than the present. He 
imagines a Golden Age in the past and heli2ves it will return. The material 
Paradise he dreams of in hi* ruder conditions, becomes a spiritual one with 
intellectual advancement. The basis of this belief. 

III. The Hierarchy of the Gods. 

The earliest hierarchy is a dual classification of the gods into those who 
help and those who hinder the fruition of desire. Light and darkness typify 
the contrast. Divinity thus conceived under numerical separateness. 
Monotheisms do not escape this. The triune nature of single gocls. The 
truly religious and only philosophic notion of divinity is under logical, not 
mathematical unity. This discards mythical conceptions. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MYTH AND THE MYTHICAL CYCLES. 

Returning again to the definition of the 
elemental religions sentiment — " a Wish whose 
fruition depends upon unknown power " — it 
enables us to class all those notions, opinions and 
narratives, which constitute mythologies, creeds 
and dogmas, as theories respecting the nature and 
action of the unknown power. Of course they 
are not recognized as theories. They arise un- 
consciously or are received by tradition, oral or 
Avritten, and always come with the stamp of 
divinity through inspiration and revelation. 
None but a god can tell the secrets of the gods. 

Therefore they are the most sacred of all 
things, and they partake of the holiness and im- 
mutability which belong to the unknown power 
itself. To misplace a vowel point in copying the 
sacred books was esteemed a sin by the Rabbis, 
and a pious Mussulman will not employ the same 
pen to copy a verse of the Koran and an ordi- 
nary letter. There are many Christians who sup- 
pose the saying : " Heaven and earth shall pass 



156 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

away, but My Words shall not pass away," has 
reference to the words of the Old and New 
Testament, " What shall remain tons," asked 
Anancla, the disciple of Buddha, "when thou 
shalt have gone hence into Nirvana ? " " My 
Word (dharma)" replied the Master. Names 
thus came to be as holy as the objects to which 
they referred. So sacred was that of Jehovah 
to the Israelites that its original sound was finally 
lost. Such views are consistent enough to the 
Buddhist, who, assuming all existence to be but 
imaginary, justly infers that the name is full as 
much as the object, 

The science of mythology has made long 
strides in the last half century. It has left far be- 
hind it the old euphemeristic view that the myth 
is a distorted historical tradition, as well as the 
theories not long since in vogue, that it was a 
system of natural philosophy, a device of shrewd 
rulers, or as Bacon thought, a series of " instruct- 
ive fables." The primitive form of the myth 
is now recognized to be made up from the notions 
which man gains of the manifestations of force 
in external nature, in their supposed relations to 
himself. In technical language it may be defined 
as the apperception of man and nature under 
synthetic conceptions} 

1 In this definition the word apperception is used in the sense 
assigned it by Professor Lazarus — the perception modified by- 
imagination and memory. " Mythologie ist eine Appercep- 
tionsforrn der Xatur und des Menschen." {Z eitsclirift fiir Vol- 



THE MYTH DEFINED. 157 

This primitive form undergoes numerous 
changes, to trace and illustrate which, has been 
the special task assumed by the many recent 
writers on mythology. In some instances these 
changes are owing to the blending of the myth 
with traditions of facts, forming a quasi-histori- 
cal narrative, the saga ; in others, elaborated by 
a poetic fancy and enriched by the imagination, 
it becomes a fairy tale, the mdrchen. Again, the 
myth being a product of creative thought, exist- 
ing in words only, as languag3 changes, it alters 
through forgetfulness of the earlier meanings of 
words, through similarities in sounds deceiving 
the ear, or through a confusion of the literal with 
the metaphorical signification of the same word. 
The character of languages also favors or retards 
such changes, pliable and easily modified ones, 
such as those of the American Indians, and in a 
less degree those of the Aryan nations, favoring a 
developed mythology, while rigid and monosyl- 
labic ones, as the Chinese and Semitic types, 
offer fewer facilities to such variations. Further- 
more, tribal or national history, the peculiar dif- 

kerpsychohgie,B&. i., s. 44). Most recent mycologists omit 
the latter branch of the definition ; for instance, « A myth is 
in its origin an explanation by the uncivilized mind of some 
natural phenomenon.' 5 (John Fiske, 'Myths and Myth Makers, 
P- 21). This is to omit that which gives the myth its only claim 
to be a product of the religious sentiment. Schopenhauer, in 
calling dogmas and myths "the metaphysics of the people," 
fell into the same error. Religion, as such, is always concrete. 



158 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

ficulties which retard the growth of a commu- 
nity, and the geographical and climatic charac- 
ter of its surroundings, give prominence to cer- 
tain features in its mythology, and to the ab- 
sence of others. Myths originally diverse are 
blended, either unconsciously, as that of the Eo- 
man Saturn with the Greek Cronus ; or con- 
sciously, as when the medieval missionaries trans- 
ferred the deeds of the German gods to Christian 
saints. Lastly, the prevailing temperament of a 
nation, its psychology, gives a strong color to its 
mythical conceptions, and imprints upon them 
the national peculiarities. 

The judicious student of mythology must 
carefully weigh all these formative agents, and 
assign each its value. They are all present in 
every mythology, but in varying force. His 
object is accomplished when he can point out the 
causal relation between the various features of 
a myth and these governing agencies. 

Such is the science of mythology. The phi- 
losophy of mythology undertakes to set forth the 
unities of form which exist in various myths, 
and putting aside whatever of this uniformity 
is explainable historically, proposes to illustrate 
from what remains the intellectual need myths 
were unconsciously framed to gratify, to measure 
their success in this attempt, and if they have 
not been wholly successful, to point out why and 
in what respect they have failed. In a study 



FORMS COMMON TO THE MYTHS. 159 

preliminary to the present one, I have attempted 
to apply the rnles of mythological science to the 
limited area of the native American race ; in the 
present chapter I shall deal mainly with the 
philosophy of mythology. 

The objection may be nrged at starting that 
there is no such unity of form in myths as the 
philosophy of mythology assumes ; that if it ap- 
pears, it is always explainable historically* 

A little investigation sets this objection aside. 
Certain features must be common to all myths. 
A divinity must appear in them and his doings 
with men must be recorded. A reasonable being 
can hardly think at all without asking himself, 
" Whence come I, my fellows, and these things 
which I see ? And what will become of us all ? " 
So some myth is sure to be created at an early 
stage of thought which the parent can tell the 
child, the wise man his disciple, containing re- 
sponses to such questions. 

But this reasoning from probability is need- 
less, for the similarity of mythical tales in very 
distant nations, where no hypothesis of ancient 
intercourse is justified, is one of the best ascer- 
tained and most striking discoveries of modern 
mythological investigation. 1 The general char- 

i Half a century ago the learned Mr. Faber, in his Origin of 
Pagan Idolatry, expressed his astonishment at " the singular, 
minute and regular accordance " between the classical myths. 
That accordance has now been discovered to be world-wide. 



130 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

acter of "solar myths" is familiar to most 
readers, and the persistency with which they 
have been applied to the explanation of generally 
received historical facts, as well as to the familiar 
fairy tales of childhood, has been pushed so far 
as to become the subject of satire and caricature. 
The myths of the Dawn have been so frequently 
brought to public notice in the popular writings 
of Professor Max Midler, that their general dis- 
tribution may be taken as well known. The 
same may be said of the storm myths. T\ ilhelm 
von Humboldt, who thought deeply on the re- 
ligious nature of man. said early in this cen- 
tury : "Wholly similar myths can very readily 
arise in different localities, each independent 
of the others." 1 

This similarity is in a measure owing to the 
similar impressions which the same phenomenon, 
the sunrise or the thunder-storm for instance, 
makes on the mind — and to this extent the 
science of mythology is adequate to its explana- 
tion. But that it falls short is so generally 
acknowledged, that various other explanations 
have been offered. 

These may be classed as the skeptical expla- 
nation, which claims that the likeness of the 
myths is vastly exaggerated and much more the 
work of the scholar at his desk than of the 

1 " GranzgleicheMythenkonnen sekr fiiglich. jede selbststan- 
dig, an verschiedenen Oerter emporkomnien. ' ' Brief e an Woelcker* 



THEORIES OF MYTHS. 161 

honest worshipper ; the historical explanation, 
which suggests unrecorded proselytisms, for- 
gotten communications and the possible original 
unity of widely separated nations; the theo- 
logical explanations, often discrepant, one sug- 
gesting caricatures of the sacred narrative 
inspired by the Devil, another reminiscences of 
a primeval inspiration, and a third the un- 
conscious testimony of heathendom to ortho- 
doxy ; 1 and lastly the metaphysical explanation, 
which seems at present to be the fashionable 
one, expressed nearly alike by Steinthal and 
Max Mtiller, which cuts the knot by crediting 
man with " an innate consciousness of the 
Absolute," or as Renan puts it, "ja profound 
instinct of deity." 

The philosophy of mythology, differing from 
all these, finding beyond question similarities 
which history cannot unriddle, interprets them 
by no incomprehensible assumption, but by the 
identity of the laws of thought acting on similar 
impressions under the guidance of known cat- 
egories of thought. Nor does it stop here, but 
proceeds to appraise these results by the general 
scheme of truth and error. It asks for what 

1 The last two are the modern orthodox theories, supported 
by Bryant, Faber, Trench, De Maistre and Sepp. Medieval 
Christianity preferred the direct agency of the Devil. Primi- 
tive Christianity leaned to the opinion that the Grecian and 
Roman myth makers had stolen from the sacred writings of 
the Jews. 

11 



162 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

psychological purpose man has so -universally 
imagined for himself gods — pure creations of his 
fancy ; — whether that purpose can now or will 
ultimately be better attained by an exercise of 
his intellect more in accordance with the laws of 
right reasoning ; and thus seeking;: to define the 
genuine food of the religious desire, estimates the 
quality and value of each mythological system by 
the nearness of its approach to this standard. 

The philosophy of mythology, starting with 
the wish or prayer as the unit of religious 
thought, regards all myths as theories about 
the unknown power which is supposed to grant 
or withhold the accomplishment of the wish. 
These theories are all based upon the postulate of 
the religious sentiment, that there is order in 
things ; but they differ from scientific theories 
in recognizing volition as an efficient cause of 
order. 

The very earliest efforts at religious thought 
do not rise to the formation of myths, that is, 
connected narratives about supernatural beings. 
All unknown power is embraced under a word 
which does not convey the notion of personality; 
single exhibitions of power which threaten man's 
life are supposed to be the doings of an unseen 
person, often of a deceased man, whose memory 
survives ; but any general theory of a hierarchy, 
or of the world or man, is not yet visible. Even 
such immature notions are, however, so far as 



THE "SEAT OF LAW." 103 

they go, framed within the category of causality ; 
only, the will of the god takes the place of 
all other force. This stage of religious thought 
has been called Animism, a name which does 
not express its peculiarity, which is, that all force 
is not only supposed to proceed from mind, but 
through what metaphysicians call " immanent 
volition," that is, through will independent of re- 
lation. Mind as " emanant volition," in unison 
with matter and law, the " seat of law," to use 
an expression of Professor Boole's, may prove 
the highest conception of force. 

As the slowly growing reason reached more 
general notions, the law which prescribes unity 
as a condition of thought led man early in his 
history to look upon nature as one, and to seek 
for some one law of its changes ; the experience 
of social order impressed him with the belief that 
the unseen agencies around him also bore rela- 
tions to each other, and acknowledged subjection 
to a leader ; and the pangs of sickness, hunger 
and terror to which he was daily exposed, and 
more than all the " last and greatest of all 
terribles, death," which he so often witnessed, 
turned his early meditations toward his own ori- 
gin and destiny. 

Around these three subjects of thought his 
fancy busied itself, striving to fabricate some 
theory which would solve the enigmas which his 
reason everywhere met, some belief which would 



164 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

relieve him from the haunting horror of the un- 
known. Hence arose three great cycles of 
myths, which recur with strangely similar physi- 
ognomies in all continents and among all races. 
They are the myths of the Epochs of Nature, 
the Hierarchy of the Gods, and of the Paradise 
lost but to be regained. Wherever we turn, 
whether to the Assyrian tablets or to the verses 
of the Voluspa, to the crude fancies of the red 
man of the new world or the black man of the 
African plateau, to the sacred books of the mod- 
ern Christian or of the ancient Brahman, we find 
these same questions occupying his mind, and in 
meaning and inform the same solutions proffered. 
Through what intellectual operations he reached 
these solutions, and their validity, as tested by 
the known criteria of truth, it is the province 
of the philosophy of mythology to determine. 

Let us study the psychological growth of the 
myth of the Epochs of Nature. This tells of 
the World, its beginning, its convulsions and its 
ending, and thus embraces the three minor cy- 
cles of the cosmogonical, the cataclysmal and the 
eschatological myths. 

Nature is known to man only as force, which 
manifests itself in change. He is so constituted 
that " the idea of an event, a change, without the 
idea of a cause, is impossible " to him. But in 
passing from the occurrence to its cause the 
idea of Time is unavoidable ; it presents itself as 



THE OPPRESSOR, TIME. 165 

the one inevitable condition of change ; itself 
unwearing, it wears out all else ; it includes all 
existence, as the greater does the less ; and as 
" causation is necessarily within existence," * 
time is beyond existence and includes the non- 
existent as well. Whatever it creates, it also 
destroys ; and as even the gods are but exist- 
ences, it will swallow them. It renders vain 
all pleasures, and carries the balm of a certain 
oblivion for all woes. 

This oppressive sense of time, regarded not 
in its real meaning as one of the conditions of 
perception, but as an active force destroying 
thought as well as motion, recurs continually in 
mythology. To the Greek, indefinite time as 
Cronos, was the oldest of the gods, begetting 
numberless children, but with unnatural act con- 
suming them again ; while definite time, as the 
Horre, were the blithe goddesses of the order in 
nature and the recurrent seasons. Osiris, su- 
preme god of the Egyptians, was born of a yet 
older god, Sev, Time. Aclonis and Aeon ac- 
knowledge the same parentage. 2 The ancient 
Arab spoke of time (dahr, zaman) as the final, 
defining principle ; as uniting and separating all 
things ; and as swallowing one thing after an- 
other as the camel drains the water from a 

1 Sir Win. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics. Appendix, 
p. 691. 

2 Creuzer, SymboUk und Mythologie, Bd. ii., s. 107. 



166 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

trough. 1 In the Koran it is written : " Time alone 
destroys us." Here and there, through the sacred 
songs of the Parsees, composed long before Aris- 
totle wrote, beyond all the dust and noise of the 
everlasting conflict of good and evil, of Ahura 
Mazda and Anya-Mainyus, there are glimpses of 
a deeper power, Zeruana Akerana, Eternal Du- 
ration, unmoved by act or thought, in the face 
of which these bitter opponents are seen to be 
children, brethren, "twin sons of Time." 2 The 
Alexandrian Gnostics, in their explanations of 
Christian dogmas, identify Aeon, infinite time, 
with God the Father, as the source and fount of 
existence ; not merely as a predicate of the 
highest, but the Highest himself. 

This heavy-weighing sense of the infinity of 
duration, and the urgency of escaping from the 
weariness of thinking it, led to the construction 
of the myth of the Creation. Man devised it so 
that he might be able to say, " in the begin- 
ning." But a new difficulty met him at the 
threshold — as change must be in existence, " we 
cannot think of a change from non-existence to 
existence." His only refuge was to select some 
apparently primordial, simple, homogeneous sub- 
stance from which, by the exertion of volition, 



1 Th. Noldeke, Zeitsclirift fur VolkerpsycJiologie, Bd. iii., 
s. 131. 

2 See a note of Prof. Spiegel to Yagna, 29, of the Khorddh- 

Avesta. 



WATER THE FIRST. 107 

things came into being. The one which most 
naturally suggested itself was water. 1 This does 
in fact cover and hide the land, and the act of 
creation was often described as the emerging of the 
dry land from the water ; it dissolves and wears 
away the hard rock ; and, diminishing all things, 
itself neither diminishes nor increases. There- 
fore nearly all cosmogonical myths are but 
variations of that one familiar to us all : " And 
God said, Let the waters under the heaven be 
gathered together in one place, and let the dry 
land appear; and it was so." The manifestation 
of the primordial energy was supposed to have 
been akin to that which is shown in organic re- 
production. The myths of the primeval egg 
from which life proceeded, of the mighty bird 
typical of the Holy Spirit which " brooded " 
upon the waters, of Love developing the Kosmos 
from the Chaos, of the bull bringing the world 
from the waters, of Protogonus, the " egg- 
born," the " multispermed," and countless 
others, point to the application of one or the 
other, or of both these explanations. 2 

In them the early thinkers found some rest : 

1 'H vypa (pvciq apxv mi yevecic iravrov. 

Plutarch, Be hide. 
According: to the Koran and the Jewish Rabbis, the throne 
of God rested on the primeval waters from which the earth was 
produced. See a note in Rodwell's translation of the Koran, 
Sura. xi. 

2 T have discussed some of these myths in the seventh chapter 
of the Myths of the New World, 



168 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

but not for long. The perplexity of the pres- 
ence of this immediate order of things seemed 
solved • but another kept obtruding itself : what 
was going on before that " beginning ? " Yain to 
stifle the inquiry by replying, " nothing." 1 For 
time, which knows no beginning, was there, still 
building, still destroying ; nothing can be put to 
it, nor anything taken from it. What then is left 
but the conclusion of the Preacher : " That which 
hath been, is now ; and that which is to be, hath 
already been ? " Eegarcling time as a form of 
force, the only possible history of the material 
universe is that it is a series of destructions 
and restorations, force latent evolving into force 
active or energy, and this dissipated and absorbed 
again into latency. 

Expressed in myths, these destructions and 
restorations are the Epochs of Nature. They 
are an essential part of the religious traditions 
of the Brahmans, Persians, Parsees, Greeks, 
Egyptians, Jews, Mexicans, Mayas, and of all 
nations who have reached a certain stage of cul- 
ture. The length of the intervening periods 
may widely differ. The kalpa or great year of 
the Brahmans is so long that were a cube of 

i How it troubled the early Christians who dared not adopt 
the refuge of the Epochs of Xature, may be seen in the Confes- 
sions of St. Augustine, Lib. XI, cap. 10. etseq. He quotes the 
reply of one pushed by the inquiry, what God was doing before 
creation : "He was making a hell for inquisitive busy-bodies." 
Alia spectantibus gehennas parabat. 



THE FLOOD MYTH. 169 

granite a hundred yards each way brushed once 
in a century by a soft cloth, it would be quite 
worn to dust before the kalpa would close : or, as 
some Christians believe, there may be but six 
thousand years, six days of God in whose sight 
" a thousand years are as one day," between 
the creation and the cremation of the world, 
from when it rose from the waters until it shall 
be consumed by the fire. 

There were also various views about the 
agents and the completeness of these periodical 
destructions. In the Norse mythology and in 
the doctrine of Buddhism, not one of the gods 
can survive the fire of the last day. Among 
the Greeks, great Jove alone will await the ap- 
pearance of the virgin world after the icy win- 
ter and the fiery summer of the Great Year. 
The Brahmans hold that the higher classes 
of gods outlive the wreck of things which, at the 
close of the day of Brahm, involves all men and 
many divinities in elemental chaos ; while else- 
where, in the later Puranas and in the myths of 
Mexico, Peru, and Assyria, one or a few of the 
race of man escape a deluge which is universal, 
and serve to people the new-made earth. This 
latter supposition, in its application to the last 
epoch of nature, is the origin of the myth of the 
Flood. 

In its general features and even in many de- 
tails, the story of a vast overflow which drowned 



170 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

the world, and from which by the timely succor 
of divinity some man was preserved, and after the 
waters had subsided became the progenitor of 
the race, is exceedingly common among distant 
tribes, where it is impossible to explain it as a 
reminiscence of a historic occurrence, or by com- 
munity of religious doctrine. In Judea Noah, in 
India Manu, in Chaldea Xisuthrus, in Assyria 
Cannes, in Aztlan Nata, in Algonkin tradition 
Messou, in Brazil Monan, etc., are all heroes of 
similar alleged occurrences. In all of them the 
story is but a modification of that of the creation 
in time from the primeval waters. 1 

" As it was once, so it shall be again," and as 
the present age of the world wears out, the myth 



1 Many interesting references to the Oriental flood-myth may 
be found in Cory's Ancient Fragments. See also, Dr. Fr. Win- 
dischmann, Die Ursagen der Arischen Vo-ker, pp. 4-10. It is 
probable that in very ancient Semitic tradition Adam was re- 
presented as the survivor of a flood anterior to that of Noah. 
Maimonides relates that the Sabians believed the world to be 
eternal, and called Adam "the Prophet of the Moon," which 
symbolized, as we know from other sources, the deity of water. 
Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, More Nevochim, cap. iv. In early 
Christian symbolism Christ was called "the true Noah " ; the 
dove accompanied him also, and as through Noah came "salva- 
tion by wood and water," so through Christ came " salvation by 
spirit and water." (See St. Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechetical 
Lectures, Lect. xvii., cap. 10). The fish [i%Bvg) was the 
symbol of Christ as well as of Oannes. As the second coming of 
Christ was to be the destruction of the world, how plainly appear 
the germs of the myth of the Epochs of Nature in the Judago- 
Christian mind ! 



THE END OF THE WORLD. 171 

teaches that things will once more fall back to uni- 
versal chaos. " The expectation of the end of 
the world is a natural complement to the belief 
in its periodical destructions." It is taught with 
distinctness by all religious systems, by the pro- 
phetess in the Voluspa, by the Hebrew seers/ by 
the writer of the Apocalypse, by the Eastern 
sages, Persian and Indian, by the Roman Sibyl, 
and among the savage and semi-civilized races 
of the New World. 

Often that looked for destruction was as- 
sociated with the divine plans for man. This 
was an addition to the simplicity of the original 
myth, but an easy and a popular one. The In- 
dian of our prairies still looks forward to the 
time when the rivers shall rise, and submerging 
the land sweep from its surface the pale-faced 
intruders, and restore it to its original owners. 
Impatient under the ceaseless disappointments of 
life, and worn out with the pains which seem 
inseparable from this condition of things, the 
believer gives up his hopes for this world, and 
losing his faith in the final conquest of the good, 
thinks it only attainable by the total annihila- 
tion of the present conditions. He looks for it, 
therefore, in the next great age, in the new 

1 Besides the expressions in the Book of Ecclesiastes and the 
later prophets, the doctrine is distinctly announced in one of the 
most sublime of the Psalms (xc), one attributed to " Moses the 
Man of God." 



172 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

heaven and the new earth, when the spirit of 
evil shall be bound and shut up, and the chosen 
people possess the land, " and grow up as calves 
of the stall." 1 

This is to be inaugurated by the Day of 
Judgment, "the day of wrath, the dreadful 
day," in which God is to come in his power and 
pronounce his final decrees on those who have 
neglected the observance due him. The mvth, 
originally one relating to the procession of natural 
forces, thus assumed with the increasing depth 
of the religious sentiment more and more a moral 
and subjective coloring, until finally its old and 
simple form was altogether discarded, or treated 
as symbolic only. 

The myth of the Epochs of Nature was at 
first a theory to account for the existing order 
of nature. For a long time it satisfied the in- 
quiring mind, if not with a solution at least with 
an answer to its queries. After geologic science 
had learned to decipher the facts of the world's 
growth as written on the stones which orb it, the 
religious mind fondly identified the upheavals 
and cataclysms there recorded with those which 
its own fancy had long since fabricated. The 
stars and suns, which the old seer thought would 
fall from heaven in the day of wrath, were seen 
to be involved in motions far beyond the pale of 

i Malachi, ch. iv., v. 2. 



MAN'S FOLLY. 173 

man's welfare, and, therefore, the millennial 
change was confined to the limits of our planet. 
Losing more and more of its original form as an 
attempted explanation of natural phenomena, 
the myth now exists in civilized nations as an 
allegorical type of man's own history and des- 
tiny, and thus is slowly merging into an episode 
of the second great cycle of the mythus, that of 
the Paradise lost and regained. It, too, finds its 
interpretation in psychology. 

Broadly surveying the life of man, philoso- 
phers have found in it much matter fit either for 
mockery or tears. We are born with a thirst 
for pleasure ; we learn that pain alone is felt. 
We ask health; and having it, never notice it 
till it is gone. In the ardent pursuit of enjoy- 
ment, we waste our capacity of aj^preciation. 
Every sweet we gain is sauced with a bitter. 
Our eyes forever bent on the future, which can 
never be ours, we fritter away the present, which 
alone we possess. Ere we have got ourselves 
ready to live, we must die. Fooling ourselves 
even here, Ave represent death as the portal to 
joy unspeakable ; and forthwith discredit our 
words by avoiding it in every possible way. 

Pitiable spectacle of weakness and folly, is 
it capable of any explanation which can redeem 
man from the imputation of unreason ? Is 
Wisdom even here justified of her children by 
some deeper law of being ? 



174 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

The theologian explains it as the unrest of 
the soul penned in its house of clay ; the phy- 
siologist attributes it to the unceasing effort of 
organic functions to adapt themselves to ever 
varying external conditions. They are both 
right, for the theologian, were his words trans- 
lated into the language of science, refers to the 
effort to adapt condition to function, which is the 
peculiar faculty of intelligence, and which alone 
renders man unable to accept the comfort of 
merely animal existence, an inability which he 
need never expect to outlive, for it will increase 
in exact proportion to his mental development. 
Action, not rest, as I have elsewhere said, must 
be his ideal of life. 

In even his lowest levels man experiences this 
dissatisfaction. It may there be confined to a 
jDain he would be free from, or a pleasure he 
dreams of. Always the future charms him, and as 
advancing years increase the number of his dis- 
appointments and bring with them the pains of 
decrepitude, he also recurs to the past, when 
youth was his, and the world was bright and gay. 
Thus it comes that most nations speak of some 
earlier period of their history as one character- 
ized by purer public virtues than the present, 
one when the fires of patriotism burned brighter 
and social harmony was more conspicuous. In 
rude stages of society this fancy receives real 
credit and ranks as a veritable record of the past, 



THE PARADISE LOST. 175 

forming a Golden Age or Saturnian Era. Turned 
in the kaleidoscope of the mythus, it assumes 
yet more gorgeous hues, and becomes a state of 
pure felicity, an Eden or a Paradise, wherein man 
dwelt in joy, and from which he wandered or was 
driven in the old days. 

It is almost needless to quote examples to 
show the wide distribution of this myth. The 
first pages of the Yendidacl describe the reign of 
Yima in " the garden of delight," where " there 
was no cold wind nor violent heat, no disease and 
no death." The northern Buddhist tells of " the 
land of joy," Sukhavati, in the far west, where 
ruled Amitabha, "infinite Light." l The Edda 
wistfully recalls the pleasant days of good King 
Gudmund who once held sway in Odainsakr, 
where death came not. 2 Persian story has glad 
reminiscences of the seven hundred years that 
Jemschid sat on the throne of Iran, when peace 
and plenty were in the land. 

The garden " eastward in Eden " of the Pen- 
tateuch, the land of Tulan or Tlapallan in Aztec 
myth, the islands of the Hesperides, the rose 
garden of Feridun, and a score of other legends 
attest with what strong yearning man seeks in 

1 C. F. Koppen, Die Lamaische Hierarchies s. 28. 

2 Odainsakr, 6 privative, dain death, akr land," the land of im- 
mortal life." Saxo Grammaticns speaks of it also. Another 
such land faintly referred to in the Edda is Breidablick, governed 
by Baldur, the Light-god. 



176 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

the past the picture of that perf ect felicity which 
the present never yields. 

Nor can he be persuaded that the golden age 
has gone, no more to return. In all conditions 
of progress, and especially where the load of the 
present was the most wearying, has he counted 
on a restoration to that past felicity. The paradise 
lost is to be regained. How it is to be clone the 
sages are not agreed. But they of old were 
unanimous that some divinity must lend his aid, 
that some god-sent guide is needed to rescue 
man from the slough of wretchedness in which 
he hopelessly struggles. 

Therefore in the new world the red men 
looked for the ruler who had governed their 
happy forefathers in the golden age, and who had 
not died but withdrawn mysteriously from view, 
to return to them, protect them, and insure them 
long bliss and ease. The ancient Persians ex- 
pected as much from the coming of Craoshang ; 
the Thibetan Buddhists look to the advent of a 
Buddha 5000 years after Sakyamuni, one whose 
fortunate names are Maitreya, the Loving one, and 
Adjita, the Unconquerable; 1 and even the prac- 
tical Boman, as we learn from Virgil, was not a 
stranger to this dream. Very many nations felt 
it quite as strongly as the Israelites, who from 
early time awaited a mighty king, the Messiah, 
the Anointed, of whom the Targums say : "In his 

1 C. F. Koppen, Die Lamaische Hierarchie und Kirche, p. 17. 



THE PARADISE TO COME. 177 

days shall peace be multiplied ; " " Pie shall exe- 
cute the judgment of truth and justice on the 
earth; " " He shall rule over all kingdoms." 

The early forms of this conception, such as 
here referred to, looked forward to an earthly 
kingdom, identified with that of the past when 
this was vigorous in the national mythology. 
Material success and the utmost physical com- 
fort were to characterize it. It was usually to 
be a national apotheosis, and was not generally 
supposed to include the human race, though 
traces of this wider view might easily be quoted 
from Avestan, Koman, and Israelitic sources. 
Those who were to enjoy it were not the dead, 
but those who shall be living. 

As the myth grew, it coalesced with that of 
the Epochs of Nature, and assumed grander pro- 
portions. The deliverer was to come at the close of 
this epoch, at the end of the world ; he was to 
embrace the whole human kind in his kingdom ; 
even those who died before his coming, if they 
had obeyed his mandates, should rise to join the 
happy throng ; instead of a mere earthly king, 
he should be a supernatural visitant, even God 
himself ; and instead of temporal pleasures only, 
others of a spiritual character were to be con- 
ferred. There are reasons to believe that even 
in this developed form the myth was familiar to 
the most enlightened worshippers of ancient 
Egypt ; but it was not till some time after the 

12 



173 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

doctrines of Christianity had been cast into 
mythical moulds by the oriental fancy, that it 
was introduced in its completed form to modern 
thought. Although expressly repudiated by 
Jesus of Nazareth himself, and applied in maxim 
and parable as a universal symbol of intelligence 
to the religious growth of the individual and race, 
his followers reverted to the coarser and literal 
meaning, and ever since teach to a greater or less 
extent the chiliastic or millennial dogma, often 
mathematically computing, in direct defiance of 
his words, the exact date that event is to be 
expected. 

If- we ask the psychological construction of 
this myth, and the ever present conditions of 
man's life which have rendered him always ready 
to create it and loath to renounce it, we trace the 
former distinctly to his sense of the purposive 
nature of the laws of thought, and the latter to 
the wide difference between desire and fulfilment. 
His intellectual nature is framed to accord with 
laws which are ever present but are not author- 
itative ; they admonish but they do not coerce ; 
that is clone surely though oft remotely by the 
consequences of ' their violation. At first, una- 
ware of the true character of these laws, he 
fancies that if he were altogether comfortable 
physically, his every wish would be gratified. 
Slowly it dawns upon him that no material grat- 
ification can supply an intellectual craving \ that 



THE MILLENNIUM. 179 

this is the real want which haunts him ; and that 
its only satisfaction is to think rightly, to learn 
the truth. Then he sees that the millennial king- 
dom is " not of this world ; " that heaven and 
earth may pass away, but that such truth as he 
seeks cannot pass away ; and that his first and 
only care should be as a faithful and wise servant 
to learn and revere it. 

The sentiments which created this mythical 
cycle, based as they are now seen to be on ultimate 
psychological laws, are as active to-clay as ever. 
This century has witnessed the rise of a school 
of powerful thinkers and true philanthropists who 
maintained that the noblest object is the securing 
to our fellow-men the greatest material comfort 
possible ; that the religious aspirations will do 
well to content themselves with this gospel of 
humanity ; and that the approach of the material 
millennium, the perfectibility of the human race, 
the complete adaptation of function to condition, 
the u distant but not uncertain final victory of 
Good," 1 is susceptible of demonstration. At 
present, these views are undergoing modification. 
It is perceived with more or less distinctness that 
complete physical comfort is not enough to make 
a man happy ; that in proportion as this comfort 
is attained new wants develope themselves, quite 
as importunate, which ask what material com- 

i John Stuart Mill, Theism, p. 256. 



180 THE BELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

fort cannot give, and whose demand is neither for 
utility nor pleasurable sensation. Such wants are 
created by the sense of duty and the love of truth. 
The main difference between the latest 
exponents of the utilitarian doctrines and the 
heralds of distinctively religious thought, is that 
the former consider that it is most important in 
the present condition of man for him to look 
after his material welfare ; while the latter teach 
that if he first subject thought and life to truth 
and duty, "all these things will be added unto him." 
Wordsworth has cast this latter opinion, and the 
myths which are its types, into eloquent verse : 

" Paradise and groves 
Elysian, Fortunate Fields — like those of old 
Sought in the Atlantic main, why should they be 
A history only of departed things, 
Or a mere fiction of what never was ? 
For the discerning intellect of man, 
When wedded to this goodly universe 
In love and holy passion, shall find these 
A simple produce of the common day." 

The incredulity and even derision with which 
the latter doctrine is received by " practical men," 
should not affright the collected thinker, as it 
certainly is not so chimerical as they pretend. 
The writer De Senancourt, not at all of a religious 
turn, in speculating on the shortest possible, road 
to general happiness, concluded that if we were 
able to foretell the weather a reasonable time 
ahead, and if men would make it a rule to speak 
the truth as near as they can, these two conditions 



THE HIERARCHY OF THE GODS. 181 

would remove nine-tenths of the misery in the 
world. The more carefully I meditate on this 
speculation, the better grounded it seems. The 
weather we are learning to know much more 
about than when the solitary Obermann penned 
his despondent dreams ; but who shall predict 
the time when men will tell the truth ? 

I now pass to the third great my thical cyclus, 
which I have called that of the Hierarchy of the 
Gods. This was created in order to define that 
unknown power which was supposed to give to 
the wish frustration or fruition. It includes 
every statement in reference to the number, 
nature, history and character of supernatural 
beings. 

The precise form under which the intellect, 
when the religious conception of unknown power 
first dawns upon it, imagines this unknown, is 
uncertain. Some have maintained that the 
earliest religions are animal worships, others that 
the spirits of ancestors or chiefs are the primitive 
gods. Local divinities and personal spirits are 
found in the rudest culture,while simple fetichism, 
or the vague shapes presented by dreams, play a 
large part in the most inchoate systems. The 
prominence of one or the other of these elements 
depends upon local and national momenta, which 
are a proper study for the science of mythology, 
but need not detain us here. The underlying 
principle in all these conceptions of divinity is 



1S2 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

that of the res per accidens, an accidental rela- 
tion of the thought to the symbol, not a general 
or necessary one. This is seen in the nature of 
these primitive gods. They have no decided 
character as propitious or the reverse other than 
the objects they typ if y, but are supposed to send 
bad or good fortune as they happen to be pleased 
or displeased with the votary. No classification as 
good and evil deities is as yet perceptible. 

This undeveloped stage of religious thought 
faded away, as general conceptions of man and 
his surroundings arose. Starting always from 
his wish dependent on unknown control, man 
found certain phenomena usually soothed his fears 
and favored his wishes, while others interfered 
with their attainment and excited his alarm. This 
distinction, directly founded on his sensations of 
pleasure and pain, led to a general, more or less 
rigid, classification of the unknown, into two op- 
posing classes of beings, the one kindly disposed, 
beneficent, good, the other untoward, maleficent, 
evil. 

At first this distinction had in it nothing of a 
moral character. It is in fact a long time before 
this is visible, and to-day but two or three 
religions acknowledge it even theoretically. All, 
however, which claim historical position set up a 
dual hierarchy in the divine realms. Ahura- 
mazda and Anya-mainyus, God and Satan, Jove 
and Pluto, Pachacamac and Supay, Enigorio and 



MA AND PAPAS. 183 

Enigohatgea are examples out of hundreds that 
might be adduced. 

The fundamental contrast of pleasure and 
pain might be considered enough to explain this 
duality. But in fact it is even farther reaching. 
The emotions are dual as well as the sensations, 
as we have seen in the first chapter. All the 
operations of the intellect are dichotomic, and in 
mathematical logic must be expressed by an 
equation of the second degree. Subject and 
object must be understood as polar pairs, and in 
physical science polarization, contrast of proper- 
ties corresponding to contrast of position, is a 
universal phenomenon. Analogy, therefore, vin- 
dicates the assumption that the unknown, like 
the known, is the field of the operation of con- 
tradictory powers. 

A variety of expression is given this philoso- 
phic notion in myths. In Egypt, Syria, Greece 
and India the contrast was that of the sexes, the 
male and female principles as displayed in the 
operations of nature. The type of all is that 
very ancient Phrygian cult in which by the side 
of Ma, mother of mountains and mistress of 
herds, stood Papas, father of the race of shep- 
herds and inventor of the rustic pipe. 1 Quite 
characteristic was the classification of the gods 
worshipped by the miners and metal workers 
of Phrygian Ida. This was into right and left, 

Creuzer, Symbolik und Jlythologie, Bd. II. , s. 47 



184 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

and the general name of Dactyli, Fingers, was 
given them. The right gods broke the spells 
which the left wove, the right pointed ont the 
ore which the left had buried, the right dis- 
closed the remedies for the sickness which the 
left had sent. This venerable division is still 
retained when we speak of a sinister portent, or 
a right judgment. It is of physiological interest 
as showing that u dextral pre-eminence " or right- 
handedness was j)revalent in earliest historic 
times, though it is unknown in any lower animal. 

The thoughtful dwellers in Farsistan also 
developed a religion close to man's wants by 
dividing the gods into those who aid and those 
who harm him, subject the one class to Ahura- 
Mazcla, the other to Anya-Mainyus. Early in 
their history this assumed almost a moral aspect, 
and there is little to be added to one of the most 
ancient precepts of their law — " Happiness be 
to the man who conduces to the happiness of 
all." 1 

"When this dual classification sought expres- 
sion through natural contrasts, there was one 
which nigh everywhere offered itself as the 
most appropriate. The savage, the nomad, lim- 
ited to the utmost in artificial contrivances, met 
nothing which more signally aided the accom- 

i This is the first line of Yacna, 42, of the Khordah-Avesta. 
The Parsees believe that it is the salutation which meets the 
soul of the good on entering the next world. 



THE GOD OF LIGHT. IGo 

plisliment of his wishes than light; nothing which 
more certainly frustrated them than darkness. 
From these two sources flow numerous myths, 
symbols, and rites, as narratives or acts which 
convey religious thought to the eye or the ear 
of sense. 

As the bringers of light, man adored the sun, 
the dawn, and fire • associated with warmth and 
spring, his farther meditations saw in it the source 
of his own and of all life, and led him to connect 
with its worship that of the reproductive prin- 
ciple. As it comes from above, and seems to 
dwell in the far-off sky, he located there his 
good gods, and lifted his hands or his eyes when 
he prayed. As light is necessary to sight, and 
as to see is to know, the faculty of knowing was 
typified as enlightenment, an inward god-given 
light. The great and beneficent deities are al- 
ways the gods of light. Their names often show 
this. Deva, Deus, means the shining one ; 
Michabo, the great white one ; the Mongols call 
Tien, the chief Turanian god, the bright one, the 
luminous one ; the northern Buddhist prays to 
Amitabha, Infinite Light; and the Christian to 
the Light of the World. 

On the other hand, darkness was connected 
with feelings of helplessness and terror. It ex- 
posed him to attacks of wild beasts and all ac- 
cidents. It was the precursor of the storm. It 
was like to death and the grave. The realm 



186 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

of the departed was supposed to be a land of 
shadows, an underground region, an unseeing 
Hades or hell. 

The task would be easy to show many strange 
corroborations of these early chosen symbols by 
the exacter studies of later ages. Light, as the 
indispensable condition of life, is no dream, but 
a fact ; sight is the highest sentient faculty ; and 
the luminous rays are real intellectual stimu- 
lants. 1 But such reflections will not escape the 
contemplative reader. 

I hasten to an important consequence of this 
dual classification of divinities. It led to what 
I may call the quantification of the gods, that is, 
to conceiving divinity under notions of number 
or quantity, a step which has led to profound 
deterioration of the religious sentiment. I do 
not mean by this the distinction between poly- 
theism and monotheism. The latter is as untrue 
and as injurious as the former, nor does it con- 
tain a whit the more the real elements of reli- 
gious progress. 

It is indeed singular that this subject has 
been so misunderstood. Much has been written 
by Christian theologians to show the superiority 
of monotheisms ; and by their opponents much 

1 " Sight is the light sense. Through it we become ac- 
quainted with universal relations, this being reason. Without 
the eye there would be no reason." Lorenz Oken, Elements of 
Physio -PhLosojrfiy, p. 475. 



MONOTHEISMS. 1ST 

has been made of Comte's loi des trois etats, 
which defines religious progress to be first fet- 
ichism, secondly polytheism, finally monotheism. 
Of this Mr. Lewes says : " The theological system 
arrived at the highest perfection of which it is 
capable when it substituted the providential ac- 
tion of a single being, for the varied operations 
of the numerous divinities which had before been 
imagined." 1 Nothing: could be more erroneous 
than the spirit of this statement ; nothing is more 
correct, if the ordinary talk of the superiority 
of monotheism in religion be admitted. 

History and long experience show that mon- 
otheistic religions have no special good effect 
either on the morals or the religious sensibility 
of races. 2 Buddhism, 3 Mohammedanism and Ju- 
daism are, at least in theory, uncompromising 
monotheisms ; modern Christianity is less so, as 
many Catholics pray to the Virgin and Saints, 
and many Protestants to Christ. So long as the 
mathematical conception of number, whether 
one or many, is applied to deity by a theological 
system, it has not yet " arrived at the highest 
perfection of which it is capable." 

For let us inquire what a monotheism is ? It 

1 History of Philosophy, Vol. II. p. 60S (4th ed.) 

2 " The intolerance of almost all religions which have main- 
tained the unity of God, is as remarkable as the contrary prin- 
ciple in polytheism." Hume, Nat. Hist, of Religion, Sec. ix. 

3 " The Lamas emphatically maintain monotheism to be the 
real character of Buddhism." Emil Schlagintweit, Buddhism 
in Tibet, p. 108. 



188 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

is a belief in one god as distinct from the belief 
in several gods. In other words, it applies to 
God the mathematical concept of unity, a concept 
which can only come into cognition by virtue 
of contrasts and determinations, and which forces 
therefore the believer either to Pantheism or 
anthropomorphism to reconcile his belief with 
his reason. No other resource is left him. With 
monotheism there must always be the idea of 
numerical separateness, which is incompatible 
with universal conceptions. 

Let him, however, clear his mind of the cur- 
rent admiration for monotheisms, and impress 
upon himself that he who would form a concep- 
tion of supreme intelligence must do so under the 
rules of pure thought, not numerical relation. 
The logical, not the mathematical, unity of the 
divine is the perfection of theological reasoning. 
Logical unity does not demand a determination 
by contrasts ; it conveys only the idea of iden- 
tity with self. As the logical attainment of 
truth is the recognition of identities in apparent 
diversity, thus leading from the logically many 
to the logically one, the assumption of the latter 
is eminently justified. Every act of reasoning 
is an additional proof of it. 1 

1 ~Ko one has seen the error here pointed out, and its injuri- 
ous results on thought, more clearly than Comte himself. He 
is emphatic in condemning " le tendance involontaire a. consti- 
tuer l'unite speculative par 1'ascendant universel des plus gros- 
sieres contemplations numerique, geometrique ou mecaniques." 



THE DELUSION OF OPPOSITE S. 189 

Nor docs the duality of nature and thought, 
to which I have alluded, in any wise contradict 
this. In pure thought Ave must understand the 
dichotomic process to be the distinction of a 
positive by a privative, both logical elements 
of the same thought, as I have elsewhere shown. 
The opposites or contraries referred to as giv- 
ing rise to the clualistic conceptions of divini- 
ty are thus readily harmonized with the concep- 
tion of logical unity. This was recognized by 
the Hindoo sage who composed the Bhagavad 
Gita, early in our era. Krishna, the Holy One, 
addressing the King Ardjuna says : " All beings 
fall into error as to the nature of creation, 
Bharata, by reason of that delusion of natural 
opposites which springs from liking and disliking, 
oh thou tormentor of thy foes ! " 1 

The substitution of the conception of mathe- 
matical for logical unity in this connection has 
left curious traces in both philosophy and reli- 
gion. It has led to a belief in the triplicate nature 
of the supreme Being, and to those philosophical 
triads which have often attracted thinkers, from 
Pythagoras and Heraclitus down to Hegel and 
Ghiberti. 

Pythagoras, who had thought profoundly on 

Sys'eme de Politique Positive; Tome I, p. 51. But he was too 
biassed to apply this -warning to Christian thought. The con- 
ception of the Universe in the losfic of Professor De Morgan and 
Boole is an example of speculative unity. 
1 Bhagavad Gita, ch. iv. 



190 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

numbers and their relations, is credited with the 
obscure maxim that every thought is made up of 
a definite one and an indefinite two (a ixovaq and an 
aoptcr-oq dua~y Some of his commentators have 
added to rather than lessened the darkness of 
this saying. But applied to concrete number, it 
seems clear enough. Take any number, ten, 
for example, and it is ten by virtue of being a 
07ie, one ten, and because on either side counting 
upward or downward, a different number ap- 
pears, which two are its logical determinants, 
but, as not expressed, make up an indefinite 
two. 

So the number one, thought as concrete 
unity, is really a trinity, made up of its definite self 
and its indefinite next greater and lesser deter- 
minants. The obscure consciousness of this has 
made itself felt in many religions when they have 
progressed to a certain plane of thought. The 
ancient Egyptian gods were nearly all triune ; 
Phanes, in the Orphic hymns the first principle 
of things, was tripartite ; the Indian trinities are 
well known ; the Celtic triads applied to divine 
as well as human existence ; the Jews distin- 
guished between Jehovah, his Wisdom and his 
Word ; and in Christian religion and philosophy 
the doctrine of the trinity, though nowhere 
taught by Christ, has found a lasting foothold, 
and often presents itself as an actual tritheism. 1 

1 See the introduction by Mr. J. W. Etheridge to The Tar- 



TRINITIES. 191 

The triplicate nature of number, thus alluded 
to by Pythagoras, springs from the third law of 
thought, and holds true of all concrete notions. 
Every such notion stands in necessary relation to 
its privative, and to the logical concept of next 
greater extension, i.e., that which includes the 
notion and its privative, as I explained in the 
first chapter. This was noted by the early Pla- 
tonists, who describe a certain concrete expression 
of it as " the intelligential triad ; " and it has 
been repeatedly commented upon by later phi- 
losophers, some of whom avowedly derive from it 
the proof of the trinitarian dogma as formulated by 
Athanasius. Even modern mathematical inves- 
tigations have been supposed to point to a Deus 
tr if or mis, though of course quite another one 
from that which ancient Rome honored. A late 
work of much ability makes the statement : " The 
doctrine of the Trinity, or something analogous 
to it, forms, as it were, the avenue through which 
the universe itself leads us up to the conception 
of the Infinite and Eternal One." 1 The explana- 



gums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel (London, 1862). St. 
Augustine believed the trinity is referred to in the opening verses 
of Genesis. Confessiones, Lib. xiii. cap. 5. The early Christian 
writer, Theophilus of Antioch (circa 225), in his Apologia, rec- 
ognizes the Jewish trinity only. It was a century later that the 
dogma was defined in its Athanasian form. See further, Isaac 
Preston Cory, Ancient Fragments, with an Inquiry into theTrinity 
of the Gentiles (London, 1832). 
1 The Unseen Universe, p. 191. 



192 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

tion of this notion is the same as that of the 
" Trinity of the Gentiles," always hitherto a 
puzzling mythological concept. 

For reasons previously given, an analysis of 
the formal law itself does not yield these ele- 
ments. They belong to a certain class of values 
assigned it, not to the law itself ; hence it is 
only when deity is conceived under the con- 
ditions of numerical oneness that the tripartite 
constitution of a whole number makes itself felt, 
and is applied to the divine nature. 

The essence of a logical unit is identity, of 
a mathematical, difference. The qualities of the 
latter are limitations — so much of a thing ; those 
of the former are coincidences — that kind of a 
thing. 

To be sure it is no easy matter to free our- 
selves from the habit of confounding identity 
and individuality. We must cultivate a much 
greater familiarity with the forms of thought, 
and the character of universals, than every-day 
life requires of us, before the distinction grows 
facile. The individual, not the species, exists ; 
our own personality, our thinking faculty is 
what w^e are most certain of. On it rests the 
reality of everything, the Unknown as well. But 
the rejection of a mathematical unity does not 
at all depreciate the force of such an argument. 
Individuality regarded as mathematical unity 
rests on the deeper law of logical identity from 



MAN AS GOD. 193 

which the validity of numbers rises ; it is not the 
least diminished, but intensified, in the concep- 
tion of a Supreme Intelligence, as the font of 
truth, though the confinements and limitations 
of the mathematical unit fall away, and all con- 
trasts disappear. 

The reverse conception, however, has prevailed 
in religious systems, polytheistic or monotheis- 
tic. Man has projected on the cloudy unknown 
the magnified picture of his own individuality 
and shuddered with terror at the self-created 
plantasm, like the peasant frightened by the spec- 
tre of the Brocken, formed by the distorted image 
of himself. In his happier moments, with his 
hopes gratified, the same vice of thought, still 
active, prevented him from conceiving any 
higher ideal than his better self. " Everywhere 
the same tendency was observed ; the gods, al- 
ways exaggerations of human power and passions, 
became more and more personifications of what 
was most admirable and lovable in human nature, 
till in Christianity there emerged the avowed 
ideal man." What could it end in but anthropo- 
morphism, or pantheism, or, rejecting both, a 
Religion of Humanity, with a background of an 
imbecile Unknowable ? 

Is it necessary to point out how none of these 
conclusions can satisfy the enlightened religious 
sentiment ? How anthropomorphism,which makes 

God in the image of man, instead of acknowledg- 

13 



194 THE BELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

ing that man is made in the image of God, 
belittles divinity to a creatnre of passions and 
caprices ? How pantheism, increasing God at 
the expense of man, wipes out the fundamental 
difference of true and false, calls bad " good 
in the making," and virtually extinguishes the 
sense of duty and the permanence of personal- 
ity ? And how the denial of all possible knowl- 
edge of the absolute digs away the only foun- 
dation on which sanity can establish a religion, 
and then palms oh 2 material comfort as the 
proper food for religious longing ? 

The long story of religious effort is not from 
f etichism to monotheism, as Comte read it ; nor 
is its only possible goal inside the limits of the 
ego, as Feuerbach and the other Neo-Hegelians 
assert ; but it is on its theoretical side to develope 
with greater and greater distinctness the unmeas- 
urable reality of pure thought, to dispense more 
and more with the quantification of the absolute, 
and to avoid in the representation of that Being 
the use of the technic of concrete existence. 

Little by little we learn that the really true 
is never true in fact, that the really good is never 
good in act. 1 Carefully cherishing this distinction 
taught by mathematics and ethics, the religious 
mind learns to recognize in that only reality 

i "A good will is the only altogether good thing in the -world.'" 
—Kant, " What man conceives in himself is always superior 
to that reality which it precedes and prepares." — Comte. 



TRUTH IS GOD. 195 

darkly seen through the glass of material things, 
that which should fix and fill its meditations. 
Passing beyond the domain of physical law, it 
occupies itself with that which defines the con- 
ditions of law. It contemplates an eternal 
activity, before which its own self-consciousness 
seems a flickering shadow, yet in that contempla- 
tion is not lost but gains an evergrowing per- 
sonality. 

This is the goal of religious striving, the 
hidden aim of the wars anol persecutions, the 
polemics and martyrdoms, which have so busied 
and bloodied the world. This satisfies the rational 
postulates of religion. Does some one say that it 
does not stimulate its emotional elements, that 
it does not supply the inrpulses of action which 
must ever be the criteria of the true faith ? Is 
it not a religion at all, but a philosophy, a search, 
or if you prefer, a love for the truth ? 

Let such doubter ponder well the signification 
of truth, its relation to life, its identity with the 
good, and the paramount might of wisdom and a 
clear understanding, and he will be ready to 
exclaim with the passionate piety of St. Augus- 
tine : " Ubi inveni veritatem, ibi inveni Deum 
meum, ipsam veritatem, quam, ex quo didici, 
non sum oblitus." 

From this brief review of its character, the 
Myth will be seen to be one of the transitory 
expressions of the religious sentiment, which in 



196 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

enlightened lands it has already outgrown and 
should lay aside. So far as it relates to events, 
real or alleged, historic or geologic, it deals with 
that which is indifferent to pure religion • and 
so far as it assumes to reveal the character, plans 
and temper of divinity, it is too evidently a re- 
flex of man's personality to be worthy of serious 
refutation where it conflicts with the better guide 
he has within him. 



THE CULT, ITS SYMBOLS AND RITES. 



SUMMARY. 



The Symbol represents the unknown; the Bite is the ceremony of 
■worship. 

A symbol stands for the supernatural, an emblem for something known. 
The elucidation of symbolism is in the laws of the association of ideas. 
Associations of similarity give related symbols, of contiguity coincident sym- 
bols. Symbols tend either toward personification (iconolatry), or toward 
secularization. The symbol has no fixed interpretation. Its indefiniteness 
shown by the serpent symbol, and the cross. The physiological relations of 
certain symbols. Their classification. The Lotus. The Pillar. Symbols 
discarded by the higher religious thought. Esthetic and scientific symbolism 
(the " Doctrine of Correspondences"). 

Kites are either propitiatory or memorial. The former spring either from 
the idea of sacrifice or of specific performance. A sacrifice is a gift, but its 
measure is what it costs the giver. Specific performance means that a 
religious act should have no ulterior aim. Vicarious sacrifice and the idea 
of sin. 

Memorial rites are intended to recall the myth, or else to keep up the 
organization. The former are dramatic or imitative, the latter institution- 
ary. Tendency of memorial rites to become propitiatory. Examples. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CULT, ITS SYMBOLS AND RITES. 

As the side which a religious system presents 
to the intellect is shown in the Myth, so the side 
that it presents to sense is exhibited in the Cult. 
This includes the representation and forms of 
worship of the unknown power which presides 
over the fruition of the Prayer or religious 
wish. The representation is effected by the 
Symbol, the worship by the Rite. The devel- 
opment of these two, and their relation to reli- 
gious thought, will be the subject of the present 
chapter. 

The word Symbolism has a technical sense 
in theological writings, to wit, the discussion of 
creeds, quite different from that in which it is 
used in mythological science. Here it means 
the discussion of the natural objects which have 
been used to represent to sense supposed super- 
natural beings. As some conception of such 
beings must first be formed, the symbol is neces- 



200 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

sarily founded upon the myth, and must be 
explained by it. 

A symbol is closely allied to an emblem, 
the distinction being that the latter is intended 
to represent some abstract conception or concrete 
fact, not supposed to be supernatural. Thus the 
serpent is the emblem of Esculapius, or, ab- 
stractly, of the art of healing ; but in its use 
as a symbol in Christian art it stands for the 
Evil One, a supernatural being. The heralclric 
insignia of the Middle Ages were emblematic 
devices ; but the architecture of the cathedrals 
was largely symbolic Both agree in aim- 
ing to aid the imagination and the memory, 
and both may appeal to any special sense, 
although the majority are addressed to sight 
alone. 

Symbolism has not received the scientific 
treatment which has been so liberally bestowed 
on mythology. The first writer who approached 
it in the proper spirit was Professor Creuzer. 1 
Previous to his labors the distinction between 
pictographic and symbolic art was not well de- 
fined. He drew the line sharply, and illustrated 
it abundantly ; but he did not preserve so clear- 
ly the relations of the symbol and the myth. 
Indeed, he regarded the latter as a symbol, a 
"phonetic" one, to be treated by the same pro- 

1 In his chapter Ideen zu einer Physik des Symbols und des 
Mythus, of his Symbolik und Mytlwlogie. 



ORIGIN OF SYMBOLS. 201 

cesses of analysis. Herein later students have 
not consented to follow him. The contrast be- 
tween these two expressions of the religions sen- 
timent becomes apparent when we examine their 
psychological origin. This Professor Creuzer did 
not include in his researches, nor is it dwelt upon 
at any length in the more recent works on the 
subject. 1 The neglect to do this has given rise 
to an arbitrariness in the interpretation of many 
symbols, which has often obscured their position 
in religious history. 

What these principles are I shall endeavor 
to indicate ; and first of the laws of the origin of 
symbols, the rules which guided the early intel- 
lect in choosing from the vast number of objects 
appealing to sense those fit to shadow forth the 
supernatural. 

It may safely be assumed that this was not 
done capriciously, as the modern parvenue makes 
for himself a heraldric device. The simple and 
devout intellect of the primitive man imagined 
a real connection between the god and the sym- 
bol. Were this questioned, yet the wonderful 
unanimity with which the same natural objects, 
the serpent, the bird, the tree, for example, were 
everywhere chosen, proves that their selection 
was not the work of chance. The constant pref- 
erence of these objects points conclusively to 

1 Dr. H. C. Barlow's Essays on Symbolism (London, 1866), 
deserves mention as one of the best of these. 



202 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

some strong and frequent connection of their 
images with mythical concepts. 

The question of the origin of symbols there- 
fore resolves itself into one of the association of 
ideas, and we start from sure ground in applying 
to their interpretation the established canons of 
association. These, as I have elsewhere said, 
are those of contiguity and similarity, the former 
producing association by the closeness of suc- 
cession of impressions or thoughts, the latter 
through impressions or thoughts recalling like 
ones in previous experience. When the same 
occurrence affects different senses simultaneously, 
or nearly so, the association is one of contiguity, 
as thunder and lightning, for a sound cannot be 
like a sight ; when the same sense is affected hi 
such a manner as to recall a previous impression, 
the association is one of similarity, as when the 
red autumn leaves recall the hue of sunset. 
Nearness in time or nearness in kind is the 
condition of association. 

The intensity or permanence of the associa- 
tion depends somewhat on temperament, but 
chiefly on repetition or continuance. Not having 
an ear for music, I may find it difficult to recall 
a song from hearing its tune ; but by dint of 
frequent repetition I learn to associate them. 
Light and heat, smoke and fire, poverty and 
hunger so frequently occur together, that the 
one is apt to recall the other. So do a large 



RELATED SYMBOLS. 203 

number of antithetical associations, as light and 
darkness, heat and cold, by inverse similarity, 
opposite impressions reviving each other, in 
accordance with the positive and privative ele- 
ments of a notion. 

This brief reference to the laws of applied 
thought, — too brief, did I not take for granted 
that they are generally familiar — furnishes the 
clue to guide us through the labyrinth of 
symbolism, to wit, the repeated association of 
the event or power recorded in the myth with 
some sensuous image. Where there is a con- 
nection in kind between the symbol and that for 
which it stands, there is related symbolism; 
where the connection is one of juxtaposition in 
time, there is coincident symbolism. Mother 
Earth, fertile and fecund, was a popular deity in 
many nations, and especially among the Egyp- 
tians, who worshipped her under the symbol of 
a cow ; this is related symbolism ; the historical 
event of the execution of Christ occurred by 
crucifixion, one of several methods common in 
that age, and since then the cross has been the 
symbol of Christianity ; this is coincident sym- 
bolism. It is easy for the two to merge, as when 
the cross was identified with a somewhat similar 
and much older symbol, one of the class I have 
called u related," signifying the reproductive 
principle, and became the " tree of life." As a 
coincident symbol is to a certain extent acciden- 



204 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

tal in origin, related symbols have always been 
most agreeable to the religious sentiment. 

This remark embodies the explanation of the 
growth of religious symbolism, and also its 
gradual decay into decorative art and mnemonic 
design. The tendency of related symbolism is 
toward the identification of the symbol with that 
for which it stands, toward personification or 
prosopopeia ; while what I may call the secular- 
ization of symbols is brought about by regarding 
them more and more as accidental connections, 
by giving them conventional forms, and treat- 
ing them as elements of architectural or pictorial 
design, or as aids to memory. 

Tin's tendency of related symbolism depends 
on a law of applied thought which has lately 
been formulated by a distinguished logician in 
the following words : " What is true of a thing, 
is true of its like." 1 The similarity of the sym- 
bol to its prototype assumed, the qualities of the 
symbol, even those which had no share in de- 
ciding its selection, no likeness to the original, 
were lumped, and transferred to the divinity. 
As those like by similarity, so those unlike, 
were identified by contiguity, as traits of the un- 
known power. This is the active element in 
the degeneracy of religious idealism. The cow 
or the bull, chosen first as a symbol of creation 

i W. S. Jevons, The Substitution of Similars, p. 15 (London, 
1869.) 



GROWTH OF THE SYMBOL. 205 

or fecundity, led to a worship of the animal 
itself, and a transfer of its traits, even to its 
horns, to the god. In a less repulsive form, the 
same tendency shows itself in the pietistic inge- 
nuity of such poets as Adam cle Sancto Victore 
and George Herbert, who delight in taking some 
biblical symbol, and developing from it a score 
of applications which the original user never 
dreamt of. In such hands a chance simile grows 
to an elaborate myth. 

Correct thought would prevent the extension 
of the value of the symbol beyond the original 
element of similarity. More than this, it would 
recognize the fact that similarity does not sup- 
pose identity, but the reverse, to wit, defect of 
likeness ; and this dissimilitude must be the 
greater, as the original and symbol are naturally 
discrepant. The supernatual, however, whether 
by this term we mean the unknown or the uni- 
versal — still more if we mean the incomprehen- 
sible — is utterly discrepant with the known, ex- 
cept by an indefinitely faint analogy. In the 
higher thought, therefore, the symbol loses all 
trace of identity and becomes merely emblem- 
atic. 

The ancients defended symbolic teaching on 
this very ground, that the symbol left so much 
unexplained, that it stimulated the intellect and 
trained it to profouncler thinking ; * practically 

1 Creuzer, Symbolik, Bd. L, s. 59. 



206 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

it had the reverse effect, the symbol being ac- 
cepted as the thing itself. 

Passing from these general rules of the selec- 
tion of symbols, to the history of the symbol 
when chosen, this presents itself to us in a re- 
ciprocal form, first as the myth led to the adop- 
tion and changes in the symbol, and as the latter 
in turn altered and reformed the myth. 

The tropes and figures of rhetoric by which 
the conceptions of the supernatural were first 
expressed, give the clue to primitive symbolism. 
A very few examples will be sufficient. Xo one 
can doubt that the figure of the serpent was 
sometimes used in pictorial art to represent the 
lightning, when he reads that the Algonkins 
straightly called the latter a snake ; when he 
sees the same adjective, spiral or winding, 
('sXtzoisdyq) applied by the Greeks to the light- 
ning and a snake ; when . the Quiche call the 
electric flash a strong serpent ; and many other 
such examples. The Pueblo Indians represent 
lightning in their pictographs by a zigzag line. 
A zigzag fence is called in the Middle States a 
worm or "snake" fence. Besides this, adjec- 
tives which describe the line traced by the ser- 
pent in motion are applied to many twisting or 
winding objects, as a river, a curl or lock of hair, the 
tendrils of a vine, the intestines, a trailing plant, 
the mazes of a dance, a bracelet, n broken ray of 
light, a sickle, a crooked limb, an anfractuous path, 



THE SERPENT SYMBOL. 207 

the phallus, etc. Hence the figure of a serpent 
may, and in fact has been, used with direct refer- 
ence to every one of these, as could easily be 
shown. How short-sighted then the expounder 
of symbolism who would explain the frequent 
recurrence of the symbol or the myth of the ser- 
pent wherever he finds it by any one of these ! 

This narrowness of exposition becomes doubly 
evident when we give consideration to two other 
elements in primitive symbolism — the multivocal 
nature of early designs, and the misapprehen- 
sions clue to contiguous association. 

To illustrate the first, let us suppose, with 
Schwarz 1 and others, that the serpent was at first 
the symbol of the lightning. Its most natural 
representation would be in motion* it might then 
stand for the other serpentine objects I have 
mentioned • but once accepted as an acknowl- 
edged symbol, the other qualities and properties 
of the serpent would present themselves to the 
mind, and the effort would be made to discover 
or to imagine likenesses to these in the electric 
flash. The serpent is venomous ; it casts its skin 
and thus seems to renew its life ; it is said to 
fascinate its prey; it lives in the ground ; it hisses 
or rattles when disturbed : none of these prop- 
erties is present to the mind of the savage who 
scratches on the rock a zigzag line to represent 
the lightning god. But after-thought brings 

1 Ursprung der Mytliologie (Berlin, 1862). 



203 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

them up, and the association of contiguity can 
apply them all to the lightning, and actually has 
done so over and over again ; and not only to 
it, but also to other objects originally represented 
by a broken line, for example, the river gods 
and the rays of light. 

This complexity is increased by the ambigu- 
ous representation of symbolic designs. The ser- 
pent, no longer chosen for its motion alone, will 
be expressed in art in that form best suited to the 
meaning of the symbol present in the mind of the 
artist. Eealism is never the aim of religious art. 
The zigzag line, the coil, the spiral, the circle and 
the straight line, are all geometrical radicals of va- 
rious serpentine forms. Any one of these may be 
displayed with fanciful embellishments and artis- 
tic aids. Or the artist, proceeding by synecdoche, 
takes a part for the whole, and instead of portray- 
ing the entire animal, contents himself with one 
prominent feature or one aspect of it. A strik- 
ing instance of this has been developed by Dr. 
Harrison Allen, in the prevalence of what he calls 
the " crotalean curve,'' in aboriginal American 
art, a line which is the radical of the profile view 
of the head of the rattle make (crotalus). x This 
he has detected in the architectural monuments 
of Mexico and Yucatan, in the Maya phonetic 
scrip, and even in the rude efforts of the savage 
tribes. Each of these elective methods of repre- 

1 Harrison Allen, M. D., The Life Form in Art, Phila. 1874. 



THE CROSS SYMBOL. 209 

senting the serpent, would itself, by independent 
association, call up ideas out of all connection what- 
ever with that which the figure first symbolized. 
These, in the mind entertaining them, will su- 
persede and efface the primitive meaning. Thus 
the circle is used in conventional symbolic art to 
designate the serpent,- but also the eye, the ear, the 
open mouth, the mamma, the sun, the moon, a 
wheel, the womb, the vagina, the return of the 
seasons, time, continued life, hence health, and 
many other things. Whichever of these ideas is 
easiest recalled will first appear on looking at a 
circle. The error of those who have discussed 
mythological symbolism has been to trace a con- 
nection of such adventitious ideas beyond the 
symbol to its original meaning; whereas the 
symbol itself is the starting-point. To one living 
in a region where venomous serpents abound, 
the figure of one will recall the sense of danger, 
the dread of the bite, and the natural hostility we 
feel to those who hurt us ; whereas no such 
ideas would occur to the native of a country where 
there are no snakes, or where they are harm- 
less, unless taught this association. 

Few symbols have received more extended 
study than that of the cross, owing to its promi- 
nence in Christian art. This, as I have said, 
was coincident or incidental only. It correspond- 
ed, however, to a current " phonetic symbol," 
in the expression common to the Greeks and 

14 



210 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Bomans of that day, " to take up one's cross," 
meaning to prepare for the worst, a metaphor 
used by Christ himself. 

Now there is no agreement as to what was 
the precise form of the cross on which he suf- 
fered. Three materially unlike crosses are each 
equally probable. In symbolic art these have 
been so multiplied that now two hundred and 
twenty-two variants of the figure are described I 1 
Of course there is nothing easier than to find 
among these similarities, with many other con- 
ventional symbols, the Egyptian Tau, the Ham- 
mer of Thor, the " Tree of Fertility," on which 
the Aztecs nailed their victims, the crossed 
lines which are described on Etruscan tombs, or 
the logs crossed at rectangles, on which the 
Muskogee Indians built the sacred fire. The 
four cardinal points are so generally objects of 
worship, that more than any other mythical con- 
ception they have been represented by cruci- 
form figures. But to connect these in any way 
with the symbol as it appears in Christian art; is 
to violate every scientific principle. 

Each variant of a symbol may give rise to 
myths quite independent of its original meaning. 
A symbol once adopted is preserved by its sacred 
character, exists long as a symbol, but with ever 
fluctuating significations. It always takes that 
which is uppermost in the mind of the votary and 

1 Cussans, Grammar of Heraldry, p. -16. 



THE LINE OF BEAUTY. 211 

tlie congregation. Hence, psychology, and espe- 
cially the psychology of races, is the only true 
guide in symbolic exegesis. 

Nor is the wide adoption and preservation of 
symbols alone due to an easily noticed similarity 
between certain objects and the earliest concep- 
tions of the supernatural, or to the preservative 
power of religious veneration. 

I have previously referred to the associations 
of ideas arising from ancestral reversions of 
memory, and from the principles of minimum 
muscular action and harmonic excitation. Such 
laws make themselves felt unconsciously from 
the commencement of life, with greater or less 
power, dependent on the susceptibility of the 
nervous system. They go far toward explain- 
ing the recurrence' and permanence of symbols, 
whether of sight or sound. Thus I attribute the 
prevalence of the serpentine curve in early re- 
ligious art largely to its approach to the " line of 
beauty," which is none other than that line 
which the eye, owing to the arrangement of its 
muscles, can follow with the minimum expen- 
diture of nervous energy. The satisfaction of 
the mind in viewing symmetrical figures or har- 
monious coloring, as also that of the ear, hi hear- 
ing accordant sounds, is, as I have remarked, based 
on the principle of maximum action with mini- 
mum waste. The mind gets the most at the 
least cost. 



212 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

The equilateral triangle, which is the simplest 
geometrical figure which can enclose a space, thus 
satisfying the mind the easiest of any, is nigh uni- 
versal in symbolism. It is seen in the Egyptian 
pyramids, whose sides are equilateral triangles 
with a common apex, in the mediseval cathedrals, 
whose designs are combinations of such triangles, 
in the sign for the trinity, the pentalpha, etc. 

The classification of some symbols of less ex- 
tensive j)revalence must be made from their pho- 
netic values. One class was formed as were the 
" canting arms " in heraldry, that is, by a rebus. 
This is in its simpler form, direct, as when Quet- 
zalcoatl, the mystical hero-god of Atzlan, is re- 
presented by a bird on a serpent, quetzal signify- 
ing a bird, coatl a serpent ; or composite, two or 
more of such rebus symbols being blended by 
sj'iiecdoche, like the " marshalling " of arms 
in heraldry, as when the same god is portrayed 
by a feathered serpent ; or the rebus may 
occur with paronymy, especially when the 
literal meaning _pf a name of the god is 
lost, as when the Algonkins forgot the sense of 
the word wabish, white or bright, as applied to 
their chief divinity, and confounding it with 
iccibos, a rabbit, wove various myths about their 
ancestor, the Great Hare, and chose the hare or 
rabbit as a totemic badge. 1 

1 Numerous examples from classical antiquity are given by 
Creuzer, Symbolilc, Bd. i. s. 114. sqq. 



THE LOTUS SYMBOL. 213 

It is almost needless to add further that the 
ideas most frequently associated with the un- 
known object of religion are those, which, 
struggling after material expression, were most 
fecund in symbols. We have but to turn to the 
Orphic hymns, or those of the Vedas or the 
Hebrew Psalms, to see how inexhaustible was 
the poetic fancy, stirred by religious awe,. in 
the discovery of similitudes, any of which, 
under favoring circumstances, might become a 
symbol. 

Before leaving this branch of my subject, I 
may illustrate some of the preceding com- 
ments by applying them to one or two well 
known subjects of religious art. 

A pleasing symbol, which has played a con- 
spicuous part in many religions, is the Egyptian 
lotus, or a lily of the Nile." It is an aquatic 
plant, with white, roseate or blue flowers, which 
float upon the water, and send up from their cen- 
tre long stamens. In Egypt it grows with the 
rising of the Nile, and as its appearance was 
coincident with that important event, it came to 
take prominence in the worship of Isis and Osiris 
as the symbol of fertility. Their mystical mar- 
riage took place in its blossom. In the technical 
language of the priests, however, it bore a pro- 
founder meaning, that of the supremacy of rea- 
son above matter, the contrast being between 
the beautiful flower and the muddy water which 



214 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

bears it. 1 In India the lotus bears other and mani- 
fold meanings. It is a symbol of the sacred river 
Ganges, and of the morally pure. No prayer in 
the world lias ever been more frequently repeat- 
ed than this: "Om ! the jewel in the lotus. 
Amen" (om mani padme hum). Many millions 
of times, every hour, for centuries, has this been 
iterated by the Buddhists of Thibet and the 
countries north of it. What it means, they can 
only explain by fantastic and mystical guesses. 
Probably it refers to the legendary birth of 
their chief saint, Avalokitesvara, who is said to 
have been born of a lotus flower. But some say 
it is a piece of symbolism not strange to its 
meaning in Egypt, 2 and borrowed by Buddhism 
from the Siva worship. In the symbolic lan- 
guage of this sect the lotus is the symbol of the 
vagina, while the phallus is called "the jewel." 
With this interpretation the Buddhist prayer 
would refer to the reproductive act ; but it is 
illustrative of the necessity of attributing wholly 
diverse meanings to the same symbol, that the 
Buddhists neither now nor at any past time at- 
tached any such signification to the expression, 
and it would be most discrepant with their doc- 
trines to do so. 3 



1 W. von Humboldt, Gesammelte Wcrke, Bd. iv., s. 332. 

2 Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, Bd. i., s. 2S2. 

3 Carl Frederick Koppen, Die Lamaische Hierarchic and 
KircJiCj ss. 59, 60, 61. 



THE PILLAR SYMBOL. 215 

Another symbol has frequently been open 
to this duplicate interpretation, that is, the up- 
right pillar. The Egyptian obelisk, the pillars 
of "Irmin" or of "Roland," set up now of 
wood, now of stone by the ancient Germans, the 
" red-painted great warpole " of the American 
Indians, the May-pole of Old England, the spire 
of sacred edifices, the staff planted on the grave, 
the terminus of the Roman landholders, all 
these objects have been interpreted to be sym- 
bols of life, or the life-force. As they were often 
of wood, the trunk of a tree for instance, they 
have often been called by titles equivalent to 
the "tree of life," and are thus connected with 
the nigh innumerable myths which relate to 
some mystic tree as the source of life. The ash 
Ygdrasyl of the Edda, the oak of Dordona and 
of the Druid, the modern Christmas tree, the sa- 
cred banyan, the holy groves, illustrate but 
faintly the prevalence of tree worship. Even so 
late as the time of Canute, it had to be forbid- 
den in England by royal edict. 

Now, the general meaning of this symbol I 
take to be the same as that which led to the 
choice of hills and " high places," as sites for 
altars and temples, and to the assigning of moun- 
tain tops as the abode i of the chief gods. It is 
seen in adjectives applied, I believe, in all lan- 
guages, certainly all developed ones, to such 
deities themselves. These adjectives are related 



216 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

to adverbs of place, signifying above, up or over. 
We speak of the supernatural, or supernal 
powers, the Supreme Being, the Most High, He 
in Heaven, and such like. So do all Aryan and 
Semitic tongues. Beyond them, the Chinese 
name for the Supreme Deity, Tien, means up. I 
have elsewhere illustrated the same fact in 
native American tongues. The association of 
light and the sky above, the sun and the heaven, 
is why we raise our hands and eyes in confident 
prayer to divinity. That at times, however, a 
religion of sex-love did identify these erect sym- 
bols with the phallus as the life-giver, is very 
true, but this was a temporary and adventi- 
tious meaning assigned a symbol far more an- 
cient than this form of religion. 

In this review of the principles of religious 
symbolism, I have attempted mainly to exhibit 
the part it has sustained in the development 
of the religious sentiment. • It has been gen- 
erally unfavorable to the growth of higher 
thought. The symbol, in what it is above the 
emblem, assumes more than a similarity, a closer 
relation than analogy; to some degree it pre- 
tends to a hypostatic union or identity of the 
material with the divine, the known to sense 
with the unknown. Fully seen, this becomes 
object worship; partially so, personification. 

There is no exception to this. The refined 
symbolisms which pass current to day as religious 



THE BITE. 217 

philosophies exemplify it. The one, esthetic 
symbolism, has its field in musical and archi- 
tectural art, in the study and portraiture of the 
beautiful ; the other, scientific symbolism, claims 
to discover in the morphology of organisms, in 
the harmonic laws of physics, and in the pro- 
cesses of the dialectic, the proof that symbolism, 
if not a revelation, is at least an unconscious in- 
spiration of universal truth. This is the " Doc- 
trine of Correspondences," much in favor with 
Swedenborgians, but by no means introduced 
by the founder of that sect. The recognition of 
the identity in form of the fundamental laws of 
motion and thought, and the clearer understand- 
ing of the character of harmony which the ex- 
periments of Helmholtz and others give us, dis- 
perse most of the mystery about these similari- 
ties. The religion of art, as such, will come up 
for consideration in the next chapter. 

The second form of the Cult is the Kite. 
This includes the acts or ceremonies of worship. 
Considered in the gross, they can be classed as 
of two kinds, the first and earliest propitiatory, 
the second and later memorial or institutionary. 
We have but to bear in mind the one aspira- 
tion of commencing religious thought, to wit, 
the attainment of a wish, to see that whatever 
action arose therefrom must be directed to that 
purpose. Hence, when we analyze the rude 
ceremonies of savage cults, the motive is 



218 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

extremely apparent. They, like their prayers, 
all point to the securing of some material ad- 
vantage. They are designed 

" to cozen 
The gods that constrain us and curse.'' 

The motives which underlie these simplest 
as well as the most elaborate rituals, and impress 
upon them their distinctively religious character 
can be reduced to two, the idea of sacrifice and 
the idea of specific performance. 

The simplest notion involved in a sacrifice is 
that of giving. The value of the gift is not, 
however, the intrinsic worth of the thing given, 
nor even the pleasure or advantage the recip- 
ient derives therefrom, but, singularly enough, 
the amount of pain the giver experiences in 
depriving himself of it ! This is also often seen 
in ordinary transactions. A rich man who sub- 
scribes a hundred dollars to a charity, is thought 
to merit less commendation than the widow who 
gives her mite. Measured by motive, this rea- 
soning is correct. There is a justice which can 
be vindicated in holding: self-denial to be a 
standard of motive. All developed religions have 
demanded the renunciation of what is dearest. 
The Ynglyngasaga tells us that in a time of fam- 
ine, the first sacrifice offered to the gods was of 
beasts only ; if this failed, men were slain to 
appease them ; and if this did not mitigate their 



SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE. 219 

anger, the king himself was obliged to die that 
they might send plenty. The Latin writers have 
handed it down that among the Germans and 
Gauls a human sacrifice was deemed the more 
efficacious the more distinguished the victim, and 
the nearer his relationship to him who offered the 
rite. 1 The slaughter of children and wives to 
please the gods was common in many religions, 
and the self-emasculation of the priests of Cybele, 
with other such painful rites, indicates that the 
measure of the sacrifice was very usually not 
what the god needed, but the willingness of the 
worshipper to give. 

The second idea, that of specific performance, 
has been well expressed and humorously com- 
mented upon by Hume in his Natural History of 
Religions. He says : " Here I cannot forbear ob- 
serving a fact which may be worth the attention 
of those who make human nature the object of 
their inquiry. It is certain that in every religion, 
many of the votaries, perhaps the greatest num- 
ber, will seek the divine favor, not by virtue and 
good morals, but either by frivolous observances, 
by intemperate zeal, by rapturous ecstasies, or 
by the belief of mysterious and absurd opinions. 
# * * In all this [i. e.,m virtue and good morals], 
a superstitious man finds nothing, which he has 
properly performed for the sake of his deity, or 

1 Adolph Holtzmaim, Deutsche Mytlwlogie, p. 232 (Leipzig, 
1874). 



220 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

which can peculiarly recommend him to divine 
favor and protectlor. * # * * But if he fast 
or give himself a sound whipping, this has a 
direct reference, in his opinion, to the service of 
God. No other motive could engage him to such 
austerities." 

The philosopher here sets forth in his in- 
imitable style a marked characteristic of relig- 
ious acts. But he touches upon it with his 
usual superficiality. It is true that no religion 
has ever been content with promoting the happi- 
ness of man, and that the vast majority of votaries 
are always seeking to do something specifically 
religious, and are not satisfied with the moral only. 
The simple explanation of it is that the religious 
sentiment has a purpose entirely distinct from 
ethics, a purpose constantly felt as something 
peculiar to itself, though obscurely seen and often 
wholly misconceived. It is only when an action 
is utterly dissevered from other ends, and is 
purely and solely religious, that it can satisfy this 
sentiment. " La religion" most truly observes 
Madame Neckerde Saussure, " ne doit point avoir 
a" autre out qiielle mhne" 

The uniform prevalence of these ideas in rites 
may be illustrated from the simplest or the most 
elaborate. Father Brebeuf, missionary to the 
Hurons in 1636, has a chapter on their super- 
stitions. He there tells us that this nation had 
two sorts of ceremonies, the one to induce the 



RITES 0F n SACRIFICE. 221 

gods to grant good fortune, the other to appease 
them when some ill-luck had occurred. Before 
running a dangerous rapid in their frail canoes 
they would lay tobacco on a certain rock where 
the deity of the rapid was supposed to reside, and 
ask for safety in their voyage. They took to- 
bacco and cast it in the fire, saying : " Heaven 
(Aronhiate), see, I give you something; aid 
me ; cure this sickness of mine." When one 
was drowned or died of cold, a feast was called, 
and the soft parts of the corpse were cut from 
the bones and burned to conciliate the personal 
god, while the women danced and chanted a 
melancholy strain. Here one sacrifice was to 
curry favor with the gods, another to soothe 
their anger, and the third was a rite, not a sacri- 
fice, but clone for a religious end, whose merit 
was specific performance. 

As the gift was valued at what it cost the 
giver, and was supposed to be efficacious in this 
same ratio, self-denial soon passed into self-tor- 
ture, prolonged fasts, scourging and lacerations, 
thus becoming legitimate exhibitions of religious 
fervor. As mental pain is as keen as bodily 
pain, the suffering of Jephthah was quite as 
severe as that of the Flagellants, and was ex- 
pected to find favor in the eyes of the gods. 

A significant corrollary from such a theory 
follows : that which is the efficacious part of the 
sacrifice is the suffering ; given a certain degree 



222 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

of this, the desired effect will follow. As to 
what or who suffers, or in what manner he or it 
suffers, these are secondary considerations, even 
unimportant ones, so far as the end to be ob- 
tained is concerned. This is the germ of vicari- 
ous sacrifice, a plan frequently observed in even 
immature religions. "What seems the diabolical 
cruelty of some superstitious rites, those of the 
Carthaginians and Celts, for example, is thorough- 
ly consistent with the abstract theory of sacri- 
fice, and did not spring from capricious malice. 
The Death of Christ, regarded as a general 
vicarious atonement, has had its efficiency ex- 
plained directly by the theory that the pain he 
suffered partook of the infinity of his divine na- 
ture ; as thus it was excruciating beyond measure, 
so it was infinitely effectual toward appeasing 
divinity. 

It is well known that this doctrine was no 
innovation on the religious sentiment of the age 
when it was preached by the Greek fathers. 
For centuries the Egyptian priests had taught 
the incarnation and sufferings of Osiris, and his 
death for the salvation of his people. Similar 
myths were common throughout the Orient, all 
drawn from the reasoning I have mentioned. 1 

They have been variously criticized. Apart 

1 "Es ist so ge^vissermassen in alien ernsten orientalischen 
Lehren das Christenf.um ii? seinem Keime vorgebildet." Creu- 
zer, Synibolik unci Mytnologie der Alien Volker, Bd. i., s. 297. 



THE ONLY SACRIFICE. 223 

from the equivocal traits this theory of atone- 
ment attributes to the supernatural powers — a 
feature counterbalanced, in modern religion, by 
subduing its harshest features — it is rooted essen- 
tially in the material view of religion. The re- 
ligious value of an act is to be appraised by the 
extent to which it follows recognition of duty. 
To acknowledge an error is unpleasant ; to re- 
nounce it still more so, for it breaks a habit ; to 
see our own errors in their magnitude, sullying 
our whole nature and reaching far ahead to 
generations yet unborn, is consummately bitter, 
and in proportion as it is bitter, will keep us from 
erring. 1 This is the "sacrifice of a contrite 
heart," which alone is not despicable; and this 
no one can do for us. We may be sure that 
neither the physical pain of victims burning in a 
slow fire, nor the mental pain of yielding up 
whatever we hold dearest upon earth, will make 
our views of duty a particle clearer or our notion 
of divinity a jot nobler; and whatever does 
neither of these is not of true religion. 

The theory of sacrifice is intimately related 
with the idea of sin. In the quotation I have 
made from Father Brebeuf we see that the 

1 In a conversation reported by Mr. John Morley, John 
Stuart Mill expressed his belief that " the coming modifica- 
tion of religion " will be controlled largely through men becom- 
ing "more and more impressed with the awful fact that apiece 
of conduct to-day may prove a curse to men and women scores 
and even hundreds of years after the author of it is dead." 



224 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Hurons recognized a distinct form of rite as ap- 
propriate to appease a god when angered. It 
is a matter of national temperament which of 
these forms takes the lead. Jontel tells of a 
tribe in Texas who paid attention only to the 
gods who worked them harm, saying that the 
good gods were good anyhow. By parity of 
reasoning, one sect of Mohammedans worship 
the devil only. It is well to make friends with 
yonr enemy, and then he will not hnrt yon ; and 
if a man is shielded from his enemies, he is safe 
enough. 

But where, as in most Semitic, Celtic and 
various other religions, the chief gods frowned 
or smiled as they were propitiated or neglected, 
and when a certain amount of j^ain was the pro- 
pitiation they demanded, the necessity of ren- 
dering this threw a dark shadow on life. What 
is the condition of man, that only through sorrow 
he can reach joy ? He must be under a curse. 

Physical and mental processes aided by anal- 
ogy this gloomy deduction. It is only through 
pain that we are stimulated to the pursuit of 
pleasure, and the latter is a phantom we never 
catch. The laws of correct reasoning are those 
which alone should guide us ; but the natural 
laws of the association of ideas do not at all cor- 
respond with the one association which reason 
accepts. . Truth is what we are born for, error 
is what is given us. 



THE SENSE OF SIN. 225 

Instead of viewing this state of things as 
one inseparable to the relative as another than 
the universal, and, instead of seeing the means of 
correcting it in the mental element of attention, 
continuance or volition, guided by experience 
and the growing clearness of the purposes of the 
laws of thought, the problem was given up as 
hopeless, and man was placed under a ban from 
which a god alone could set him free ; he was 
sunk in original sin, chained to death. 

To reach this result it is evident that a con- 
siderable effort at reasoning, a peculiar view of 
the nature of the gods, and a temperament not 
the most common, must be combined. Hence it 
was adopted as a religious dogma by but a few 
nations. The Chinese know nothing of the 
"sense of sin," nor did the Greeks and Romans. 
The Parsees do not acknowledge it, nor do the 
American tribes. " To sin," in their languages, 
does not mean to offend the deity, but to make 
a mistake, to miss the mark, to loose one's way 
as in a wood, and the missionaries have exceed- 
ing difficulty in making them understand the 
theological signification of the word. 

The second class of rites are memorial in 

character. As the former were addressed to the 

gods, so these are chiefly for the benefit of the 

people. They are didactic, to preserve the myth, 

or institutionary, to keep alive the discipline and 

forms of the church. 

15 



226 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Of this class of rites it may broadly be said 
they are tbe myth, dramatized. Indeed, the drama 
owes its origin to the mimicry by worshippers of 
the supposed doings of the gods. The most 
ancient festivals have reference to the recur- 
rence of the seasons, and the ceremonies which 
mark them represent the mythical transactions 
which are supposed to govern the yearly changes. 
The god himself was often represented by the 
high priest, and masked figures took the parts 
of attendant deities. 

Institutionary rites are those avowedly de- 
signed to commemorate a mvth or event, and 
to strengthen thereby the religious organization. 
Christian baptism is by some denominations 
looked upon as a commemorative or institution- 
ary rite only ; and the same is the case with the 
Lord's Supper. These seem to have been the 
only rites recommended, though the former was 
not practiced by Christ. In any ordinary mean- 
ing of his words, he regarded them both as insti- 
tutionary. 

The tendency of memorial to become propitia- 
tory rites is visible in all materialistic religions. 
The procedure, from a simple commemorative 
act, acquires a mystic efficacy, a supernatural 
or spiritual power, often supposed to extend 
to the deity as well as the votary. Thus the In- 
dian " rain-maker " will rattle his gourd, beat 
his drum, and blow through his pipe, to represent 



MEMORIAL RITES. 227 

the thunder, lightning, and wind of the storm ; 
and he believes that by this mimicry of the rain- 
god's proceedings he can force him to send the 
wished-for showers. The charms, spells and in- 
cantations of sorcery have the same foundation. 
Equally visible is it in the reception of the Chris- 
tian rites above mentioned, baptism and the Eu- 
charist, as " sacraments," as observances of divine 
efficacy in themselves. All such views arise 
from the material character of the religious 
wants. 

The conclusion is that, while emblems and 
memorial rites have nothing in them which can 
mar, they also have nothing which can aid the 
growth and purity of the religious sentiment, 
beyond advancing its social relations ; while 
symbols, in the j)roper sense of the term, and 
propitiatory rites, as necessarily false and without 
foundation, always degrade and obscure religious 
thought. Their prominence in a cult declines, 
as it rises in quality ; and in a perfected 
scheme of worship they would have no place 
whatever. 



THE MOMENTA OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 



SUMMARY. 



National impulses and aims as historic ideas. Their recurrence and its 
explanation. Their permanence in relation to their truth and consciousness. 
The historic ideas in religious progress are chiefly three. 

I. The Idea of the Perfected Individual. 

First placed in physical strength. This gave way in Southern Europe to 
the idea of physical symmetry, a religion of beauty and art. Later days 
have produced the idea of mental symmetry, the religion of culture. All 
have failed, and why ? The momenta of true religion in each. 

II. The Idea of the Perfected Commonwealth. 

Certain national temperaments predispose to individualism, others to 
communism. The social relations governed at first by divine law. Later, 
morality represents this law. The religion of conduct. The religion of sen- 
timent and of humanity. Advantages and disadvantages in this idea. 

Comparisons of these two ideas as completed respectively by Wilhelm 
von Humboldt and Auguste Comte. 

III. The Idea of Personal Survival. 

The doctrine of immortality the main moment in Christianity, Islam and 
Buddhism. Unfamiliar to old and simple faiths. Its energy and speculative 
relations. It is decreasing as a religious moment owing to, (1) a better under- 
standing of ethics, (2) more accurate cosmical conceptions, (3) the clearer 
defining of life, (4) the increasing immateriality of religions. 

The future and final moments of religious thought. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE MOMENTA OF KELIGIOTTS THOUGHT. 

The records of the past can be studied vari- 
ously. Events can be arranged in the order of 
their occurrence : this is chronology or annals ; 
in addition to this, their connections and mutual 
relations as cause and effect may be shown : this 
is historical science ; or, thirdly, from a general 
view of trains of related events some abstract 
aim as their final cause may be theoretically de- 
duced and confirmed by experience : this is the 
philosophy of history. The doctrine of final 
causes, in its old form as the argumentum de ajpjpe,- 
titu, has been superseded. Function is not pur- 
pose ; desire comes from the experience of pleas- 
ure, and realizes its dreams, if at all, by the slow 
development of capacity. The wish carries no 
warrant of gratification with it. No " argument 
from design " can be adduced from the region 
where the laws of physical necessity prevail. 
Those laws are not designed for an end. 

When, however, in the unfolding of mind we 
reach the stage of notions, we observe a growing 
power to accomplish desire, not only by altering 



232 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

the individual or race organism, but also by 
bringing external objects into unison with the 
desire, reversing the process common in the life 
of sensation. This spectacle, however, is con- 
fined to man alone, and man as guided by pros- 
pective volition, that is, by an object ahead. 

When some such object is common to a na- 
tion or race, it exercises a wide influence on its 
destiny, and is the key to much that otherwise 
would be inexplicable in its actions. What we 
call national hopes, ambitions and ideals are such 
objects. Sometimes they are distinctly recog- 
nized by the nation, sometimes they are pursued 
almost unconsciously. They do not correspond 
to things as they are, but as they are wished to 
be. Hence there is nothing in them to insure 
their realization. They are like an appetite, 
which may and may not develope the function 
which can gratify it. They have been called 
"historic ideas," and their consideration is a 
leading topic in modern historical science. 

Reason claims the power of criticizing such 
ideas, and of distinguishing in them between 
what is true and therefore obtainable, and what 
is false and therefore chimerical or even destruc- 
tive. This is the province of the philosophy of 
history. It guides itself by those general prin- 
ciples for the pursuit of truth which have been 
noticed in brief in the earlier pages of this book. 
Looking before as well as after, it aspires in the 



HISTORIC IDEAS. 233 

united light of experience and the laws of mind, 
to construct for the race an ideal within the 
reach of its capacities, yet which will develope 
them to the fullest extent, a pole-star to which 
it can trust, in this night teeming with will-o'-the 
wisps. 

The opinion that the history of mind is a pro- 
gress whose end will be worth more than was its 
beginning, may not prove true in fact — the con- 
crete expression never wholly covers the ab- 
stract requirements — but it is undoubtedly true 
in theory. The progress, so far, has been by no 
means a lineal one — each son a better man than 
his father — nor even, as some would have it, a 
spiral one — periodical recurrences to the same 
historical ideas, but each recurrence a nearer ap- 
proach to the philosophical idea — but it has been 
far more complex and irregular than any geomet- 
rical figure will illustrate. These facile general- 
izations do not express it. 

Following the natural laws of thought man * 
has erred infinitely, and his errors have worked 
their sure result — they have destroyed him. 
There is no " relish of salvation " in an error ; 
otherwise than that it is sure to kill him who 
obstructs the light by harboring it. There is no 
sort of convertability of the false into the true, J 
as shallow thinkers of the day teach. 

Man has only escaped death when at first by a 
lucky chance, and then by personal and inherited 



234 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

experience, his thoughts drifted or were forced 
into conformity with the logical laws of thought. 

A historic idea is a complex product 
formed of numerous conceptions, some true and 
others false. Its permanency and efficacy are in 
direct proportion to the number and clearness of 
the former it embraces. "When it is purging it- 
self of the latter, the nation is progressive ; when 
the false are retained, their poison spreads and 
the nation decays. 

The periodical recurrence of historic ideas 
is one of their most striking features. The ex- 
planations offered for it have been various. The 
ancient doctrines of an exact repetition of, events 
in the cycles of nature, and of the transmigra- 
tion of souls, drew much support from it ; and 
the modern modification of the latter theory as 
set forth by Wordsworth and Lessing, are dis- 
tinctly derived from the same source. Eightly 
elucidated, the philosophical historian will find 
in it an invaluable clue to the unravelment of 
the tangled skein of human endeavor. 

Historic periodicity is on the one side an 
organic law of memory, dependent upon the 
revival of transmitted ancestral impressions. A 
prevailing idea though over-cultivation exhausts 
its organic correlate, and leads to defective nutri- 
tion of that part in the offspring. Hence they do 
not pursue the same idea as their fathers, but 
revert to a remoter ancestral historic idea, the 



THE HISTORIC IDEA. 235 

organic correlate of which has lain fallow, thus 
gained strength. It is brought forth as new, 
receives additions by contiguity and similarity, 
is ardently pursued, over- cultivated, and in time 
supplanted by another revival. 

But this material side corresponds to an all- 
important mental one. As an organic process 
only, the history of periodic ideas is thus satis- 
factorily explained, but he who holds this explana- 
tion to be exhaustive sees but half the problem. 

The permanence of a historic idea, I have 
stated, is in direct proportion to the number of 
true ideas in its composition ; the impression it 
makes on the organic substrata of memory is in 
turn in proportion to its permanence. The ele- 
ment of decay is the destructive effects of nat- 
ural trains of thought out of accord with the 
logically true trains. These cause defective 
cerebral nutrition, which is thus seen to arise, so 
far as influenced by the operations of the mem- 
ory, from relations of truth and error. There 
is a physiological tendency in the former to pre- 
serve and maintain in activity • in the latter to 
disappear. The percentage of true concepts 
which makes up the complexity of a historic idea 
gives the principal factor towards calculating its 
probable recurrence. Of course, a second factor 
is the physiological one of nutrition itself. 

The next important distinction in discussing 
historic ideas is between those which are held 



236 THE BEL1GI0US SENTIMENT. 

consciously, and those which operate unconscious- 
ly. The former are always found to be more 
active, and more amenable to correction. An 
unconscious idea is a product of the natural, not 
the logical laws of mind, and is therefore very 
apt to be largely false. It is always displaced 
with advantage by a conscious aim. 

One of the superficial fallacies of the clay, 
which pass under the name of philosophy, is to 
maintain that any such historic idea is the best 
possible one for the time and place in which it is 
found. I am led to refer to this by the false light 
it has thrown on religious history. Herbert Spen- 
cer remarks in one of his essays : 1 .; " All reli- 
gious creeds, during the eras in which they are 
severally held, are the best that could be held." 
"All are good for their times and places." So 
far from this being the case, there never has been 
a religion but that an improvement in it would 
have straightway exerted a beneficent effect. 
Man, no matter what his condition, can always 

1 Essay on the use of Anthropomorphism. Mr. Spencer's argu- 
ment, in his own words, is this : — " From the inability under 
which we labor to conceive of a Deity save as some idealization of 
ourselves, it inevitably results that in each age, among each 
people, and to a great extent in each individual, there must 
arise just that conception of Deity best adapted to the needs of 
the case." " All are good for their times and places." " All 
were beneficent in their effects on those who held them." It 
would be hard to quote from the records of theory-making an 
example of more complete indifference to acknowledged facts 
than these quotations set forth. 



PHILOSOPHERS' FALLACIES. 237 

derive immediate good from higher conceptions 
of Deity than he himself has elaborated. Nor is 
the highest conception possible an idealization of 
self, as I have sufficiently shown in a previous 
chapter, but is one drawn wholly from the realm 
of the abstract. Moreover, as a matter of his- 
tory, we know that in abundant instances, the 
decay of nations can be traced largely to the base 
teachings of their religious instructors. To 
maintain that such religions were " the best pos- 
sible ones " for the time and place is the absurdest 
optimism. In what a religion shares of the ab- 
stractly true it is beneficent; in what it par- 
takes of the untrue it is deleterious. This, and 
no other canon, must be our guide. 

The ideas of religious history obey the same 
laws as other historic ideas. They grow, decay, 
are supplanted and revive again in varying 
guises, in accordance with the processes of organic 
nutrition as influenced by the truth or falsity of 
their component ideas. Their tendency to per- 
sonification is stronger, because of the much 
greater nearness they have to the individual de- 
sire. The one aspiration of a high-spirited people 
when subjugated will be freedom ; and in the 
lower stages of culture they will be very certain 
to fabricate a myth of a deliverer to come. 

In like manner, every member of a com- 
munity shares with his fellow members some 
wish, hope or ambition dependent on unknown 



238 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

control and therefore religions in character, which 
will become the "formative idea" of the national 
religious development. 

Of the various ideas in religious history there 
are three which, through their permanence and 
frequent revival, we may justly suppose in ac- 
cordance with the above-mentioned canons to 
contain a large measure of truth, and yet to be 
far from wholly true. They may be considered as 
leading moments in religious growth, yet withal 
lacking something or other essential to the satis- 
faction of the religious sentiment. The first of 
these is the idea of the perfected individual; the 
second the idea of the perfected commonwealth; 
the third, that of personal survival. These have 
been the formative ideas (Ideen der Gestaltung) 
in the prayers, myths, rites and religious institu- 
tions of many nations at widely separated times. 

Of the two first mentioned it may be said that 
every extended faith has accepted them to 
some degree. They are the secret of the alli- 
ances of religion with art, with government, with 
ethics, with science, education and sentiment. 

These alliances have often been taken by 
historians to contain the vital elements of reli- 
gion itself, and many explanations based on one 
or another assumption of the kind have been 
proffered. Religion, while it may embrace any 
of them, is independent of them all. Its rela- 
tions to them have been transitory, raid the more 



THE PEBFEGTED INDIVIDUAL. 239 

so as their aims have been local and material. The 
brief duration of the subjection of religion to 
such incongenial ties was well compared by 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury to the early maturity 
of brutes, who attain their full growth in a year or 
two, while man needs a quarter of a century. 1 
The inferior aims of the religious sentiment were 
discarded one after another to make way for 
higher ones, which were slowly dawning upon it. 
In this progress it was guided largely by the 
three ideas I have mentioned, which have been 
in many forms leading stimuli of the religious 
thought of the race. 

First, of the idea of the perfected individual. 

Many writers have supposed that the contem- 
plation of Power in nature first stirred religious 
thought in man. Though this is not the view 
taken in this book, no one will question that the 
leading trait in the gods of barbarism is physical 
strength. The naive anthropomorphism of the 
savage makes his a god of a mighty arm, a giant 
in stature, puissant and terrible. He hurls the 
thunderbolt, and piles up the mountains in sport. 
His name is often The Strong One, as in the 
Allah, Eloah of the Semitic tongues. Hercules, 
Chon, Melkarth, Dorsanes, Thor and others were 
of the most ancient divinities in Greece, Egypt, 
Phoenicia, India, and Scandinavia, and were all 
embodiments of physical force. Such, too, was 

1 De Verltate, p. 216. 



240 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

largely the character of the Algonkin Messou, 
who scooped out the great lakes with his hands 
and tore up the largest trees by the roots. The 
huge boulders from the glacial epoch which are 
scattered over their country are the pebbles he 
tossed in play or in anger. The cleft in the 
Andes, through which flows the river Funha, was 
opened by a single blow of Nemqueteba, chief 
god of the Muyscas. In all such and a hundred 
similar legends, easy to quote, we see the notion 
of strength, brute force, muscular power, was that 
deemed most appropriate to divinity, and that 
which he who would be godlike must most sedu- 
lously seek. When filled with the god, the votary 
felt a surpassing vigor. The Berserker fury was 
found in the wilds of America and Africa, as 
well as among the Fiords. Sickness and weakness, 
on the contrary, were signs that the gods were 
against him. Therefore, in all early stages of cul- 
ture, the office of priest and physician was one. 
Conciliation of the gods was the catholicon. 

Such deities were fearful to behold. They 
are represented as mighty of stature and ter- 
rible of mien, calculated to appal, not attract, to 
inspire fear, not to kindle love. In tropical 
America, in Egypt, in Thibet, almost where you 
will, there is little to please the eye in the pic- 
tures and statues of deities. 

In Greece alone, a national temperament, 
marvellously sensitive to symmetry, developed 



THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 241 

the combination of maximum strength with per- 
fect form in the sun-god, Apollo, and of grace 
with beauty in Aphrodite. The Greeks were the 
apostles of the religion of beauty. Their philo- 
sophic thought saw the permanent in the Form, 
which outlives strength, and is that alone in 
which the race has being. In its transmission 
love is the agent, and Aphrodite, unmatched in 
beauty and mother of love, was a creation 
worthy of their devotion. Thus with them the 
religious sentiment still sought its satisfaction in 
the individual, not indeed in the muscle, but in 
the feature and expression. 

When the old gods fell, the Christian fathers 
taught their flocks to abhor the beautiful as one 
with the sensual. St. Clement of Alexandria 
and Tertullian describe Christ as ugly of visage 
and undersized, a sort of Socrates in appearance. 1 
Christian art was long in getting recognition. 
The heathens were the first to represent in pic- 
ture and statues Christ and the apostles, and for 
long the fathers of the church opposed the mul- 
tiplication of such images, saying that the in- 
ward beauty was alone desirable. Christian art 
reached its highest inspiration under the influence 
of Greek culture after the fall of Constantinople. 

1 August Neander, Geschichte der Chistliclien ReHgion unci 
Kirche, Bd. i, ss. 160, 346. (Gotha, 1856.) St. Clement's de- 
scription of Christ is Toy oipiv ato X pov. Tertullian says : " Nee 
humanae honestatis corpus fuit, nedum celestis claritatis." 

16 



242 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

In the very year, however, that Eafaello Sanzio 
met his premature death, Luther burned the de- 
cretals of the pope in the market-place of Witten- 
berg, and preached a doctrine as hostile to art 
as was that of Eusebius and Chrysostom. There 
was no longer any hope for the religion of beauty. 

Nevertheless, under the influence of the revi- 
val of ancient art which arose with Winckel- 
mann towards the close of the last century, a 
gospel of esthetics was preached. Its apostles 
were chiefly Germans, and among them Schiller 
and Goethe are not inconspicuous names. The 
latter, before his long life was closed, began to 
see the emptiness of such teachings, and the 
violence perpetrated on the mind by forcing on 
the religious sentiment the food fit only for the 
esthetic emotions. 

The highest conception of individual 'perfec- 
tion is reached in a character whose physical and 
mental powers are symmetrically trained, and 
always directed by conscious reason to their ap- 
propriate ends. Self-government, founded on 
self-knowledge, wards off the pangs of disap- 
pointment by limiting ambition to the attain- 
able. The affections and emotions, and the pleas- 
ures of sensation as well, are indulged in or 
abstained from, but never to the darkening of 
the intellect. All the talents are placed at usury ; 
every power exercised systematically and fruit- 
fully with a consecration to a noble purpose. 



THE RELIGION OF CULTURE. 213 

This is the religion of culture. None other 
ranks among its adherents so many great minds ; 
men, as Carlyle expresses it, of much religi- 
osity, if of little religion. The ideal is a taking 
one. Such utter self-reliance, not from ignor- 
ance, but from the perfection of knowledge, was 
that which Buddha held up to his followers : 
" Self is the God of self ; who else should be the 
God?" In this century Goethe, Wordsworth, 
beyond all others Wilhelm von Humboldt, have 
set forth this ideal. Less strongly intellectual 
natures, as Maine de Biran, De Senancourt, 
and Matthew Arnold, listen with admiration, 
but feel how unknown to the mass of human 
kind must remain the tongue these masters 
speak. 

Thus did the religious sentiment seek its sat- 
isfaction in the idealization, first of physical force, 
then of form, and last of mental force, but 
in each case turned away unsatisfied. Wherein 
did these ideals fail ? The first mentioned in 
exalting power over principle, might over right. 
As was well said by the philosophical Novalis : 
" The ideal of morality has no more dangerous 
rival than the ideal of physical strength, of the 
most vigorous life. Through it man is trans- 
formed into a reasoning beast, whose brutal 
cleverness has a fascination for weak minds." 1 
The religion of beauty failed in that it addressed 

1 Novalis, Schrifien, B. i., s. 244. 



2U THE R ELIGIO US SENTIMENT. 

the esthetic emotions, not the reasoning power. 
Art does not promote the good ; it owes no fealty 
to either utility or ethics : in itself, it must be, 
in the negative sense of the words, at once use- 
less and immoral. " Nature is not its standard, 
nor is truth its chief end." 1 Its spirit is repose, 
" the perfect form in perfect rest ; " whereas the 
spirit of religion is action because of imperfec- 
tion. Even the gods must know of suffering, and 
partake, in incarnations, of the miseries of men. 

In the religion of culture what can we blame ? 
That it is lacking in the impulses of action 
through the isolation it fosters ; that it is and 
must be limited to a few, for it provides no de- 
fense for the weaknesses the many inherit ; that 
its tendency is antagonistic to religion, as it cuts 
away the feeling of dependence, and the trust 
in the unknown ; that it allows too little to en- 
thusiasm ever to become a power. 

On the other hand, what momenta of true 
religious thought have these ideals embraced? 
Each presents some. Physical vigor, regarded as 
a sign of complete nutrition, is an indispensable 
preliminary to the highest religion. Correct 
thought cannot be, without sufficient and appro- 
priate food. If the nourishment is inadequate, 
def ective energy of the brain will be transmitted, 
and the offspring will revert ancestrally to a 
lower plane of thought. " It thus happens that 

1 A. Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, p. 607. 



THE RELIGION OF ART. 245 

the minds of persons of high religious culture by 
ancestral descent, and the intermarriage of reli- 
gious families, so strangely end in the production 
of children totally devoid of moral sense and 
religious sentiment — moral imbeciles in short." 1 
From such considerations of the necessity of 
physical vigor to elevated thought, Descartes 
predicted that if the human race ever attain per- 
fection it will be chiefly through the art of medi- 
cine. Not alone from emotions of sympathy 
did the eminent religious teachers of past ages 
maintain that the alleviation and prevention of 
suffering is the first practical duty of man ; but it 
was from a perhaps unconscious perception of 
the antagonism of bodily degeneration to mental 
progress. 

So, too, the religion of beauty and art con- 
tains an indefeasible germ of true religious 
thought. Art sees the universal in the isolated 
fact ; it redeemed the coarse symbol of earlier 
days by associating it with the emotions of joy, 
instead of fear ; commencing with an exalta- 
tion of the love to sex, it etherealized and en- 
nobled passion ; it taught man to look elsewhere 
than to material things for his highest pleasure, 
for the work of art always has its fortune in the 
imagination and not in the senses of the ob- 
server ; conceptions of order and harmony are 

1 Dr. T. Laycock, On some Organic Laws of Memory, in the 
Journal of Mental Scie?ice, July, 1875, p. 178. 



246 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

familiar to it; its best efforts seek to bring 
all the affairs of life under unity and system ; * 
and thus it strengthens the sentiment of moral 
government, which is the first postulate of re- 
ligion. 

The symmetry of the individual, as under- 
stood in the religion of culture, is likewise a 
cherished article of true religion. Thus only 
can it protect personality against the pitfalls of 
self-negation and absorption, which communism 
and pantheism dig for it. The integrity and 
permanence of the person is the keystone to re- 
ligion, as it is to philosophy and ethics. None 
but a false teacher would measure our duty to 
our neighbor by a higher standard than our love 
to ourselves. The love of God alone is worthy 
to obscure it. 

Professor Steinthal has said : " Every people 
has its own religion. The national tempera- 
ment hears the tidings and interprets them as it 
can." 2 On the other hand, Humboldt — perhaps 

1 Speaking of the mission of the artist, Wilhelm von Hum- 
boldt says : " Die ganze Natur, treu und vollstandig beobach- 
tet, mit sich hiniiber zu tragen, d. h. den Stoff seiner Erf ahr- 
ungen dem Umfange der Welt gleich zu machen, diese unge- 
heure Masse einzelner und abgerissener Erscheinungen iti 
eine l'ungetrennte Einheit und ein organisirtes Ganzes zu ver- 
Wandeln; und dies durch alle die Organe zu thun, die ihm 
hierzu verliehen sind, — ist das letzte Ziel seines intellectuellen 
Bemuhen." Ueber Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea, Ab. IV. 

2 Zeitschrift ficr Volkerpsychologie, B. I. s. 48. 



IDEAL OF COMMONWEALTH. 247 

the profoundest thinker on these subjects of his 
generation — doubted whether religions can be 
measured in reference to nations and sects, be- 
cause "religion is altogether subjective, and 
rests solely on the conceptive powers of the in- 
dividual." 1 Whatever the creed, a pure mind \^ 
will attach itself to its better elements, a base 
one to its brutal and narrow doctrines. A na- 
tional religion can only be regarded as an aver- 
age, applicable to the majority, not entirely 
correct of the belief of any one individual, 
wholly incorrect as to a few. Yet it is indubi- 
table that the national temperament creates the 
ideal which gives the essence of religion. Races 
like the Tartar Mongols, who, as we are in- 
formed by the Abbe Hue, not ^infrequently 
move their tents several times a clay, out of sim- 
ple restlessness, cannot desire the same stability 
that is sought by other races, who have the bea- 
ver's instinct for building and colonizing;, such 
as the Romans. Buddhism, which sets up the 
ideal of the individual, is an acceptable theory 
to the former, while the latter, from earliest 
ages, fostered religious views which taught the 
subordination of the individual to the commun- 
ity, in other words, the idea of the perfected 
commonwealth. 

This is the conception at the base of all 

1 Gesammche Werlce. Bd. VII. , s. 63. 



2i8 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

theocracies, forms of government whose statutes 
are identified with the precepts of religion. In- 
stead of a constitution there is the Law, given 
and sanctioned by God as a rule of action. 

The Law is at first the Myth applied. Its 
object is as much to propitiate the gods as to 
preserve social order. It is absolute because it 
is inspired. Many of its ordinances as drawn 
from the myth are inapplicable to man, and are 
unjust or frivolous. Yet such as it is, it rules 
the conduct of the commonwealth and expresses 
the ideal of its perfected condition. 

All the oldest codes of laws are religious, and 
are alleged revelations. The Pentateuch, the 
Avesta, the Laws of Manu, the Twelve Tables, 
the Laws of Seleucus, all carry the endorse- 
ment, "And God said." Their real intention is 
to teach the relation of man to God, rather than 
the relations of man to man. On practical 
points — on the rights of property, on succession 
and wills, on contracts, on the adoption of 
neighbors, and on the treatment of enemies — 
they often violate the plainest dictates of nat- 
ural justice, of common humanity, even of 
family affection. Their precepts are frequently 
frivolous, sometimes grossly immoral. But if 
these laws are compared with the earliest myths 
and cults, and the opinions then entertained of 
the gocls, and how to propitiate them, it be- 
comes easy to see how the precepts of the law 



BE LI G 1 ON AS CONDUCT. 249 

flowed from these inchoate imaginings of the re- 
ligious sentiment. 1 

The improvement of civil statutes did not 
come through religion. Experience, observa- 
tion and free thought taught man justice, and 
his kindlier emotions were educated by the de- 
sire to cherish and preserve which arose from 
family and social ties. As these came to be 
recognized as necessary relations of society, re- 
ligion apjDropriated them, incorporated them into 
her ideal, and even claimed them as her rev- 
elations. History largely invalidates this claim. 
The moral jDrogress of mankind has been mainly 
apart from dogmatic teachings, often in conflict 
with them. An established rule of faith may 
enforce obedience to its statutes, but can never 
develop morals. " True virtue is independent 
of every religion, and incompatible with any 
which is accepted on authority." 2 

Yet thinkers, even the best of them, appear 
to have had difficulty in discerning any nobler 
arena for the religious sentiment than the social 
one. " Religion," says Matthew Arnold, " is 
conduct." It is the power " which makes for 
righteousness." " As civil law," said Voltaire, 
" enforces morality in public, so the use of religion 
is to compel it in private life." " A complete 

1 See this forcibly brought out and abundantly illustrated in 
the work of M. Coulange, La Cite Antique. 

2 W. von Humboldt, Gesammelte Werke. Bd. VII., p. 72. 



250 THE BELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

morality/' observes a contemporary Christian 
writer, " meets all the practical ends of religion." 1 
In such expressions man's social relations, his duty 
to his neighbor, are taken to exhaust religion. 
It is still the idea of the commonwealth, the 
religion of morality, the submission to a law 
recognized as divine. Whether the law is a code 
of ethics, the decision of a general council, or the 
ten commandments, it is alike held to be written 
by the finger of God, and imperative. Good 
works are the demands of such religion. 

Catholicism, which is altogether theocratic and 
authoritative, which pictures the church as an 
ideal commonwealth, has always most flourished 
in those countries where the Eoman colonies 
left their more important traces. The reforma- 
tion of Protestantism was a reversion to the ideal 
of the individual, which was that of ancient 
Teutonic faith. In more recent times Cathol- 
icism itself has modified the rigidity of its teach- 
ings in favor of the religion of sentiment, as it 
has been called, inaugurated by Chateaubriand, 
and which is that attractive form seen in the 
writings of Madame Swetchine and the La 
Ferronnais. These elevated souls throw a charm 
around the immolation of self, which the egotism 
of the Protestant rarely matches. 

1 H. L. Liddon, Canon of St. Paul's. Some Elements of 
Religion, p. 81. 



THE ONE MAN POWER. 251 

Thus the ideal of the commonwealth is found 
in those creeds which give prominence to law, to 
ethics, and to sentiment, the altruistic elements of 
mind. It fails, because its authority is antagonis- 
tic to morality in that it impedes the search for 
the true. Neither is morality religion, for it 
deals with the relative, while religion should 
guide itself by the absolute. Every great re- 
ligious teacher has violated the morality of his 
day. Even sentiment, attractive as it is, is no 
ground on which to build a church. It is, at 
best, one of the lower emotional planes of action. 
Love itself, which must be the kernel of every true 
religion, is not in earthly relations an altruistic 
sentiment. The measure and the source of all 
such love, is self-love. t The creed which rejects 
this as its corner stone will build in vain. 

While, therefore, the advantages of organiza- 
tion and action are on the side of the faiths which 
see in religion a form of government, they pre- 
sent fewer momenta of religious thought than 
those which encourage the greater individuality. 
All forms and reforms, remarks Machiavelli, in 
one of his notes to Livy, have been brought 
about by the exertions of one man. 1 Eeligious 

1 The Chevalier Bnnsen completed the moral estimate of the 
one-man-power, thus acknowledged by Machiavelli, in these 
words : " Alles Grosse geht aus vom Einzelnen, aber nur in 
dem Masse, als dieser das Icli dem Ganzen opfert." Gott in der 
GescJiichte, Bd. I., s. 38. 



252 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

reforms, especially, never have originated in 
majorities. The reformatory decrees of the 
Council of Trent are due to Martin Luther. 

Either ideal, raised to its maximum, not only 
fails to satisfy the religious sentiment, but puts 
upon it a forced meaning, and is therefore not 
what this sentiment asks. This may be illus- 
trated by comparing two remarkable works, 
which, by a singular coincidence, were published 
in the same year, and which better than any 
others present these ideals pushed to their ex- 
treme. It is characteristic of them that neither 
professes to treat of religion, but of politics. The 
one is entitled, " An Attempt to define the limits 
of Government" and is by Wilhelm von Hum- 
boldt ; the other is the , better known work of 
Auguste Comte, his " System of Positive 

Polity r 1 

The first lays down the principle that the 
highest end of man is the utmost symmetrical 
education of his own powers in their individual 
peculiarities. To accomplish this, he must enjoy 
the largest freedom of thought and action con- 
sistent with the recognition of the same right 
in others. In regard to religion, the state should 
have nothing to do with aiding it, but should 

1 W\ von Humboldt, Ideen zu •einem V&rsucJi, die Granzen der 
Wirk^amheit des Staats zu bestimmen, Breslau, 1851. Auguste 
Comte, Systeme de Politique Positive, Paris, 1851-4. The former 
was written many years before its publication. 



COMTE AND HUMBOLDT. 253 

protect the individual in his opposition to any 
authoritative form of it. As a wholly personal 
and subjective matter, social relations do not 
concern it. In fine, the aim of both government 
and education should be the development of 
an individualism in which an enlightened in- 
tellect controls and directs all the powers toward 
an exalted self-cultivation. 

Comte reverses this picture. His funda- 
mental principle is to subordinate the sum total 
of our existence to our social relations ; real 
life is to live in others • not the individual but 
humanity is the only worthy object of effort. 
Social polity therefore includes the whole of 
development ; the intellect should have no other 
end but to subserve the needs of the race, and 
always be second to the altruistic sentiments. 
Love toward others should absorb self-love. 
"II est encore meilleur $ aimer que d'etre aime" 

Such is the contrast between the ideal of the 
individual as exhibited by the Religion of Culture, 
and the ideal of the commonwealth as portrayed 
in the Religion of Humanity. 

The whole duty of man, says the one school, 
is to live for others ; nay, says the other, it is to 
live intelligently for himself ; the intellect, says 
the former, should always be subordinated to so- 
ciety, and be led by the emotions ; intellect, says 
the latter, should ever be in the ascendant, and 
absolutely control and direct the emotions ; the 



254 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

theoretical object of government, says the former, 
is to enable the affections and thoughts to pass 
into action ; not so, says the latter, its only use 
is to give the individual secnre leisure to devel- 
op e his own affections and thoughts. Mutual 
relation is the key note of the former, independ- 
ence of the latter ; the former is the apotheosis 
of love, the latter of reason. 

Strictly and literally the apotheosis. For, dif- 
fering as they do on such vital points, they both 
agree in dispensing with the ideas of God and 
immortality as conceptions superfluous in the re- 
alization of the theoretical perfection they con- 
template. Not that either scheme omits the re- 
ligious sentiment. On the contrary, it is especi- 
ally prominent in one, and very well marked in 
the other. Both assume its growing prominence, 
never its extinction. Both speak of it as an in- 
tegral part of man's highest nature. 

Comte and Humboldt were thinkers too pro- 
found to be caught by the facile fallacy that the 
rapid changes in religious thought betoken the 
early abrogation of all creeds. Lessing, the 
philosophers of the French revolution, James 
Mill, Schopenhauer and others fell into this er- 
ror. They were not wiser than the clown of 
Horace, who seated himself by the rushing 
stream, thinking it must soon run itself out — 

Expectat rusticus dum defluat amni.s ; at ill e 
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevnm. 



PERSONAL SURVIVAL. 255 

Yain is the dream that man will ever reach the .. 
point when he will think no more of the gods. 
Dogmas may disappear, bnt religion will flourish ; 
destroy the temple and sow it with salt, in a few 
days it rises again built for aye on the solid 
ground of man's nature. 

So long as the race is upon earth, just so long 
will the religious sentiment continue to crave its 
appropriate food, and this at last is recognized 
even by those who estimate it at the lowest. 
"To yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction," 
observes Professor Tynclall in one of his best 
known addresses, " is the problem of problems at 
the present hour. It is vain to oppose it with a 
view to its extirpation." The u general thaw of 
theological creeds," which Spencer remarks upon, 
is no sign of the loss of interest in religious sub- 
jects, but the reverse. Coldness and languor are 
the premonitions of death, not strife and defence. 

But as the two moments of religious thought 
which I have now discussed have both reached 
their culmination in a substantial repudiation of 
religion, that which stimulates the religious sen- 
timent to-day must be something different from 
either. This I take to be the idea of personal 
survival after physical death, or, as it is generally \S 
called, the doctrine of the immortality of the 
soul. 

This is the main dogma in the leading reli- 
gions of the world to-clay. " A God," remarks 



250 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

Sir William Hamilton, speaking for the enlight- 
ened Christians of his generation, " is to ns of 
practical interest, only inasmuch as he is the con- 
dition of our immortality." * In his attractive 
work, La Vie Etemelle, whose large popularity 
shows it to express the prevailing views of 
modern Protestant thought, Ernest Naville 
takes pains to distinguish that Christianity is not 
a means of living a holy life so much as one of 
gaining a blessed hereafter. The promises of a 
life after death are numerous and distinct in the 
Js T ew Testament. Most of the recommendations 
of action and suffering in this world are based on 
the doctrine of compensation in the world to 
come. 

Mohammed taught the same tenet with equal 
or even greater emphasis. In one sura he says : 
" To whatever is evil may they be likened who 
believe not in a future life ; " and elsewhere : 
" As for the blessed ones — their place is Para- 
dise. There shall they dwell so long as the 
heavens and the earth endure, enjoying the im- 
perishable bounties of God. But as for those 
who shall be consigned to misery, their place is 
the Fire. There shall they abide so long as the 
heavens and the earth shall last, unless God wills 
it otherwise." 2 

In Buddhism, as generally understood, the 

1 Lectures on Metaphysics, Vol. I., p. 23. 



NIRVANA. 257 

doctrine of a future life is just as clear. Not 
only does the soul wander from one to another 
animal body, but when it has completed its 
peregrinations and reaches its final abode, it 
revels in all sorts of bliss. For the condition 
of Nirvana, understood by philosophical Bud- 
dhists as that of the extinction of desires even 
to the desire of life, and of the complete enlight- 
enment of the mind even to the recognition that 
existence itself is an illusion, has no such mean- 
ing to the millions who profess themselves the 
followers of the sage of Kapilavastu. They take 
it to be a material Paradise with pleasures as 
real as those painted by Mohammed, wherein 
they will dwell beyond all time, a reward for 
their devotions and faith in this life. 

These three religions embrace three-fourths 
of the human race and all its civilized nations,with 
trifling exceptions. They displaced and extin- 
guished the older creeds and in a few centuries 
controlled the earth ; but as against each other 
their strife has been of little avail. The reason 
is, they share the same momentum of religious 
thought, differing in its interpretation not more 
among themselves than do orthodox members of 
either faith in their own fold. Many enlightened 
Muslims and Christians, for example, consider 
the descriptions of Paradise given in the Koran 
and the Apocalypse to convey wholly spiritual 

meanings. 

17 



258 THE BELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

There lias been so much to surprise in the 
rapid extension of these faiths that the votaries 
of each claim manifest miraculous interposition. 
The religious idea of an after life is a sufficient 
moment to account for the phenomenon. I say 
the religious idea, for, with one or two exceptions, 
however distinct had been the belief in a here- 
after, that belief had not a religious coloring 
until they gave it such. Tins distinction is an 
important one. 

Students of religions have hitherto attributed 
too much weight to the primitive notion of an 
existence after death. It is common enough, 
but it rarely has anything at all to do with the 
simpler manifestations of the religious sentiment. 
These are directed to the immediate desires of 
the individual or the community, and do not look 
beyond the present life. The doctrine of com- 
pensation hereafter is foreign to them. I have 
shown this at length so far as the religions of 
America were concerned. " Neither the delights 
of a heaven on the one hand, nor the terrors of a 
hell on the other were ever held out by priests 
or sages as an incentive to well doing, or a 
warning to the evil disposed. " 1 The same is 
true of the classical religions of Greece and 
Kome, of Carthage and Assyria. Even in Egypt 
the manner of death and the rites of interment 
had much more to do with the fate of the soul, 

1 The Myths of the New World, Chap. IX. 



LIFE HEREAFTER. 259 

than had its thoughts and deeds in the flesh. 
The opinions of Socrates and Plato on the soul 
as something which always existed and whose 
after life is affected by its experiences here, 
struck the Athenians as novel and innovating. 

On the other hand, the ancient Germans had 
a most lively faith in the life hereafter. Money 
was loaned in this world to be repaid in the next. 
But with them also, as with the Aztecs, the future 
was dependent on the character or mode of death 
rather than the conduct of life. He who died 
the "straw-death" on the couch of sickness 
looked for little joy in the hereafter; but he 
who met the "spear-death" on the field of 
battle went at once to Odin, to the hall of Val- 
halla, where the heroes of all time assembled to 
fight, eat boar's fat and drink beer. Even this 
rude belief gave them such an ascendancy over 
the materialistic Romans, that these distinctly 
felt that in the long run they must succumb to 
a bravery which rested on such a mighty 
moment as this. 1 

The Israelites do not seem to have entertained 
any general opinion on an existence after death. 
No promise in the Old Testament refers to a 
future life. The religion there taught nowhere 

1 Jacob Grimm quite overlooked this important element in 
the religion of the ancient Germans. It is ably set forth by 
Adolf Iloltzmann, Deutsche Mytliologie, s. 196 sqq. (Leipzig, 

1S7J:). 



260 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

looks beyond the grave. It is materialistic to 
the fullest extent. Hence, a large body of ortho- 
dox Jewish philosophers, the Sadclucees, denied 
the existence of the soul apart from the body. 

The central doctrine of the teachings of 
Jesus of Nazareth, the leading impulse which 
he gave to the religious thought of his age, was 
that the thinking part of man survives his phys- 
ical death, and that its condition does not depend 
on the rites of interment, as other religions then 
taught, 1 but on the character of its thoughts 
during life here. Filled with this new and sub- 
lime idea, he developed it in its numerous appli- 
cations, and drew from it those startling infer- 
ences, which, to this day, stagger his followers, 
and have been in turn, the terror and derision 
of his foes. This he saw, that against a mind 

i The seemingly heartless reply he made to one of his disci- 
ples, who asked permission to perform the funeral rites at his 
father's grave : "Follow me ; and let the dead bury their 
dead,'' is an obvious condemnation of one of the most wide- 
spread superstitions of the ancient world. So, according to an 
ingenious suggestion of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was the 
fifth commandment of Moses : "JNe parentum seriem tan- 
quam primam aliquam causam suspicerent homines, et proinde 
cultum aliquem Divinum ill-is deferrent, qualem ex honore 
parentum sperare liceat benedictionem, docuit." De Veritate, 
p. 231. 

Herbert Spencer in his Essay on the, Origin of Animal Wor- 
ship, calls ancestral worship " the universal first form of relig- 
ious belief." This is very far from correct, but it is easy to 
see how a hasty thinker would be led into the error by the prom- 
inence of the ancient funereal ceremonies. 



BUDDHA'S TEACHING. 2G1 

inwardly penetrated with the full conviction of 
a life hereafter, obtainable under known condi- 
tions, the powers of this world are utterly fu- 
tile, and its pleasures hollow phantoms. 

The practical energy of. this doctrine was 
immensely strengthened by another, which is 
found very obscurely, if at all, stated in his own 
words, but which was made the central point of 
their teaching by his immediate followers. The 
Christianity they preached was not a philosophi- 
cal scheme for improving the race, but rested on 
the historical fact of a transaction between God 
and man, and while they conceded everlasting 
existence to all men, all would pass it in the ut- 
most conceivable misery, except those who had 
learned of these historical events, and under- 
stood them as the church prescribed. 

As the ancient world placed truth in ideas 
and not in facts, no teaching could well have 
been more radically contrary to its modes of 
thought ; and the doctrine once accepted, the 
spirit of proselytizing came with it. 

I have called this idea a new one to the first 
century of our era, and so it was in Europe and 
Syria. But in India, Sakyamuni, probably five 
hundred years before, had laid down in senten- 
tious maxims the philosophical principle which 
underlies the higher religious doctrine of a 
future life. These are his words, and if through 
the efforts of reasoning we ever reach a demon- 



262 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

stration of the immortality of the soul, we shall 
do it by pursuing the argument" here indica- 
ted : " Eight thought is the path to life ever- 
lasting. Those who think do not die." 1 

Truth alone contains the elements of indefi- 
nite continuity ; and truth is found only in the 
idea, in correct thought. 

Error in the intellectual processes corres- 
ponds to pain in sensation; it is the premoni- 
tion of waning life, of threatened annihilation ; 
it contains the seed of cessation of action or 
death. False reasoning is self-destructive. The 
man who believes himself invulnerable will 
scarcely survive his first combat. A man's true 
ideas are the most he can hope, and all that he 
should wish, to carry with him to a life hereafter. 
Falsehood, sin, is the efficient agent of death. 
As Bishop Hall says : " There is a kind of not- 
being in sin ; for sin is not an existence of 
somewhat that is, but a deficiency of that recti- 
tude which should be ; it is a privation, as blind- 
ness is a privation of sight." 

While the religious doctrine of personal sur- 
vival has thus a position defensible on grounds 
of reason as being that of the inherent perma- 
nence of self-conscious truth, it also calls to its 
aid and indefinitely elevates the most powerful 
of all the emotions, love. This, as I have shown 

1 Dhammapada, 21. 



LOVE OF GOD. 263 

in the second chapter, is the sentiment which is 
characteristic of preservative acts. Self-love, 
which is prominent in the idea of the perfected 
individual, sex-love, which is the spirit of the 
multiform religious symbolism of the reproduc- 
tive act, and the love of race, which is the chief 
motor in the religion of humanity, are purified 
of their grosser demands and assigned each its 
meet post in the labor of uniting the concep- 
tions of the true under the relation of person- 
ality. 

The highest development of which such love 
is capable arises through the contemplation of 
those verities which are abstract and eternal, 
and which thus set forth, to the extent the in- 
dividual mind is capable of receiving it, the 
completed notion of diuturnity. This highest 
love is the " love of God." A Supreme Intelli- 
gence, one to which all truth is perfect, must 
forever dwell in such contemplation. Therefore 
the deeper minds of Christianity define man's 
love of God, as God's love to himself. " Eter- 
nal life," says Ernest Naville, " is in its princi- 
ple the union with God and the joy that results 
from that union." 1 The pious William Law 
wrote : " No man can reach God with his love, 
or have union with Him by it, but he who is 
inspired with that one same spirit of love, with 

1 La Vie Eternelle, p. 339. 



201 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

which God loved himself from all eternity, be- 
fore there was any creation." 1 

Attractive as the idea of personal survival is 
in itself, and potent as it has been as a moment 
of religions thought, it must be ranked among 
those that are past. While the immortality of 
the soul retains its interest as a speculative in- 
quiry, I venture to believe that as an idea in 
religious history, it is nigh inoperative ; that as 
an element in devotional life it is of not much 
weight ; and that it will gradually become less 
so, as the real meaning of religion reaches 
clearer interpretations. 

Its decay has been progressive, and common 
to all the creeds which taught it as a cardinal 
doctrine, though most marked in Christianity. 
A century ago Gibbon wrote : " The ancient 
Christians were animated by a contempt for 
their present existence, and by a just confidence 
of immortality, of which the doubtful but im- 
perfect faith of modern ages cannot give us any 
adequate notion." 2 How true this is can be 
appreciated only by those who study this doc- 
trine in the lives and writings of the martyrs 
and fathers of the primitive church. 

The breach which Gibbon remarked has been 
indefinitely widened since his time. What has 

1 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Yol. I., ch. XY. 

2 Address to the Clergy, p. 16. 



IMMOR TALI TY. 2G5 

brought this about, and what new moment in re- 
ligious thought seems about to supply its place, 
will form an appropriate close to the present 
series of studies. In its examination, I shall 
speak only of Christian thought, since it leads 
the way which other systems win ultimately 
follow. 

In depicting the influences which have led 
and are daily leading with augmented force to 
the devitalizing of the doctrine of immortality, I 
may with propriety confine myself to those which 
are themselves strictly religious. For the change 
I refer to is not one brought about by the op- 
ponents of religion, by materialistic doctrines, 
but is owing to the development of the religious 
sentiment itself. Instead of tending to an abro- 
gation of that sentiment, it may be expected to 
ennoble its emotional manifestations and elevate 
its intellectual conceptions. 

Some of these influences are historical, as the 
repeated disappointments in the second coming of 
Christ, and the interest of proselytizing churches 
to interpret this event allegorically. Those 
which I deem of more importance, however, are 
such as are efficient to-day, and probably will 
continue to be the main agents in the immediate 
future of religious development. They are : 

(1.) The recognition of the grounds of ethics. 

(2.) The recognition of the cosmical rela- 
tions. 



266 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

(3.) The clearer defining of life. 

(4.) The growing immateriality of religious 
thought. 

(1.) The authority of the Law was assumed 
in the course of time by most Christian churches, 
and the interests of morality and religion were 
claimed to be identical. The Koman church 
with its developed casuistry is ready to prescribe 
the proper course of conduct in every emer- 
gency ; and if we turn to many theological wri- 
ters of other churches, Dick's PJiiIosoj)hy of 
Religion for instance, we find moral conduct 
regarded as the important aim of the Christian 
life. Morality without religion, works without 
faith, are pronounced to be of no avail in a reli- 
gious, and of very questionable value in a social 
sense. Some go so far as to deny that a person 
indifferent to the prevailing tenets of religion 
can lead a pure and moral life. Do away with 
the belief in a hereafter of rewards and punish- 
ments, say these, and there is nothing left to re- 
strain men from the worst excesses, or at least 
from private sin. 

Now, however, the world is growing to per- 
ceive that morality is separable from religion ; 
that it arose independently, from a gradual study 
of the relations of man to man, from principles 
of equity inherent in the laws of thought, and 
from considerations of expediency which de- 
prive its precepts of the character of universality. 



MORALS AND RELIGION. 207 

Eeligion is subjective, and that in which it exerts 
an influence on morality is not its contents, but 
the reception of them peculiar to the individual. 
Experience alone has taught man morals ; pain 
and pleasure are the forms of its admonitions ; 
and each generation sees more clearly that the 
principles of ethics are based on immutable 
physical laws. Moreover, it has been shown to 
be dangerous to rest morality on the doctrine of 
a future life ; for apart from the small effect the 
terrors of a hereafter have on many sinners, as 
that doctrine is frequently rejected, social inter- 
ests suffer. And, finally, it is debasing and hurt- 
ful to religion to make it a substitute for police 
magistracy. 1 

The highest religion would certainly enforce 
the purest morality ; but it is equally true that 
such a religion would enjoin much not approved 
by the current opinions of the day. The spirit 
of the reform inaugurated by Luther was a pro- 
test against the subjection of the religious senti- 
ment to a moral code. With the independence 
thus achieved, it came to be recognized that to 
the full extent that morality is essential to reli- 
gion, it can be reached as well or better without 
a system of rewards and punishments after death, 

1 "Toute religion, qiron se permet de defendre comme une 
croyance qu'il est utile de laisser an peuple,ne pent plus esperer 
qu'une agonie plus ou moins prolongee. " Condorcet, De V Esprit 
IIu?nain, Ep. V. 



1/ 



263 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

than with one. Both religion and morality 
stand higher, when a conception of an after life 
for this purpose is dropped. 

(2.) The recognition of the cosmical relations 
has also modified the views of personal survival. 
The expansion of the notions of space and time 
hy the sciences of geology and astronomy has, 
as I before remarked, done away with the an- 
cient belief that the culminating catastrophe of 
the universe will be the destruction of this 
world. An insignificant satellite of a third rate 
sun, which, with the far grander suns whose 
light we dimly discern at night, may all be 
swept away in some flurry of " cosmical 
weather," that the formation or the dissolution of 
such a body would be an event of any beyond 
the most insignificant importance, is now known 
to be almost ridiculous. To assert that at the end 
of a few or a few thousand years, on account of 
events transpiring on the surface of this planet, 
the whole relationship of the universe will be 
altered, a new heaven and a new earth be 
formed, and all therein be made subservient to 
the joys of man, becomes an indication of an ar- 
rogance which deserves to be called a symptom 
of insanity. Thus, much of the teleology both 
of the individual and the race taught by the 
primitive and medieval church undergoes se- 
rious alterations. The literal meaning of the 
millennium, the New Jerusalem, and the reign 
of God on earth has been practically discarded. 



THE AIM OF THINGS. 269 

With the disappearance of the ancient opin- 
ion that the universe was created for man, the 
sun to light him by day and the stars by night, 
disappeared also the later thesis that the happi- 
ness or the education of man was the aim of the 
Order in Things. The extent and duration of 
matter, if they indicate any purpose at all, sug- 
gest one incomparably vaster than this ; while 
the laws of mind, which alone distinctly point to 
purpose, reveal one in which pain and pleasure 
have no part or lot, and one in which man has 
so small a share that it seems as if it must be in- 
different what his fate may be. The slightest 
change in the atmosphere of the globe will 
sweep away his species forever. 

Schopenhauer classified all religions as opti- 
misms or pessimisms. The faith of the future 
will be neither. What is agreeable or disagree- 
able to man will not be its standard of the ex- 
cellence of the universe. However unwillingly, 
he is at last brought to confess that his com- 
fort is not the chief nor even any visible aim of 
the order in things. In the course of that order 
it may be, nay, it is nigh certain, that the hu- 
man species will pass through decadence to ex- 
tinction along with so many other organisms. 
Neither as individuals nor as a race, neither in 
regard to this life nor to the next, does the idea 
of God, when ennobled by a contemplation of 
the cosmical relations, permit to man the effron- 



270. THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

tery of claiming that this universe and all that 
therein is was made with an eye to his wants 
and wishes, whether to gratify or to defeat 
them. 

(3.) The closer defining of life as a result of 
physical force, and the recognition of mind as a 
connotation of organism, promise to be active in 
elevating religious conceptions, but at the expense 
of the current notions of personality. Sensation 
and voluntary motion are common to the fetus, 
the brute and the plant, as well as to man. 
They are not part of his " soul." Intellect and 
consciousness, as I have shown, exclude sensation, 
and in these, if anywhere, he must look for his 
immortal part. Even here, error works destruc- 
tion, and ignorance plants no seed of life. We 
are driven back to the teaching of Buddha, that 
true thought alone is that which does not die. 

Why should we ask more ? What else is 
worth saving ? Our present personality is a 
train of ideas base and noble, true and false, 
coherent through the contiguity of organs nour- 
ished from a common center. Another per- 
sonality is possible, one of true ideas coherent 
through conscious similarity, independent of sen- 
sation, as dealing with topics not commensurate 
with it. Yet were this refuge gained, it leaves 
not much of the dogma that every man has 
an indestructible conscious soul, which will endure 
always, no matter what his conduct or thoughts 



KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 271 

have been. Rather does it favor the opinion 
expressed so well by Matthew Arnold in one 
of his sonnets : 

" He who flagged not in the earthly strife 

From strength to strength advancing— only he, 
His soul well knit and all his battles won, 
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life." 

Not only has the received doctrine of a " soul," 
as an undying something different from mind and 
peculiar to man, received no support from a closer 
study of nature, — rather objections amount- 
ing to refutation, — but it has reacted injuriously 
on morals, and through them on religion itself. 
Buddha taught that the same spark of immor- 
tality exists in man and brute, and actuated 
by this belief laid down the merciful rule to his 
disciples : " Do harm to no breathing thing. " 
The apostle Paul on the other hand, recognizing 
in the lower animals no such claim on our sym- 
pathy, asks with scorn : " Doth God care for 
oxen ? " and actually strips from a humane 
provision of the old Mosaic code its spirit of 
charity, in order to make it subserve a point 
in his polemic. 

(4.) As the arrogance of the race has thus met 
a rebuke, so has the egotism of the individual. 
His religion at first was a means of securing ma- 
terial benefits ; then a way to a joyous existence 
beyond the tomb : the love of self all the time 
in the ascendant. 



272 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

This egoism in the doctrine of personal sur- 
vival has been repeatedly flung at it by satirists, 
and commented on by philosophers. The Chris- 
tian who " hopes to be saved by grossly believ- 
ing " has been felt on all hands to be as mean in 
his hope, as he is contemptible in his way of at- 
taining it. To center all our religious efforts to 
the one end of getting joy — however we may 
define it — for our individual selves, has some- 
thing repulsive in it to a deeply religious mind. 
Yet that such in the real significance of the doc- 
trine of personal survival is granted by its 
ablest defenders. " The general expectation of 
future happiness can afford satisfaction only as it 
is a present object to the principle of self-love, " 
says Dr. Butler, the eminent Lord Bishop of Dur- 
ham, than whom no acuter analyst has written 
on the religious nature of man. 

Yet nothing is more certain than that the 
spirit of true religion wages constant war with 
the predominance or even presence of selfish 
aims. Self-love is the first and rudest form of 
the instinct of preservation. It is sublimed and 
sacrificed on the altar of holy passion. " Self," 
exclaims the fervid William Law, " is both atheist 
and idolater; atheist, because it rejects God; 
idolater, because it is its own idol." Even when 
this lowest expression of the preservative in- 
stinct rises but to the height of sex-love, it re- 
nounces self, and rejoices in martyrdom. "All 



ALL FOB LOVE. 273 

for love, or the world well lost," has been the 
motto of too many tragedies to be doubted now. 
By the side of the ancient Roman or the soldier of 
the French revolution, who through mere love of 
country marched joyously to certain death from 
which he expected no waking, does not the 
martyr compare unfavorably, who meets the 
same death, but does so because he believes that 
thereby he secures endless and joyous life ? Is 
his love as real, as noble, as unselfish ? 

Even the resistless physical energy which 
the clear faith in the life hereafter has so often 
imparted, becomes something uncongenial to 
the ripened religious meditation. Such faith 
brings about mighty effects in the arena of 
man's struggles, but it does so through a sort 
of mechanical action. An ulterior purpose is 
ahead, to wit, the salvation of the soul, and it 
may be regarded as one of the best established 
principles of human effort that every business 
is better done, when it is clone for its own sake, 
out of liking for it, than for results expected 
from it. 

Of nothing is this more just than religion. 
Those blossoms of spiritual perfection, the puri- 
fied reason, the submissive will, the sanctifying 
grace of abstract ideas, find no propitious airs 
amid the violent toil for personal survival, 
whether that is to be among the mead jugs of 

Valhalla, the dark-eyed houris of Paradise, or 

18 



271 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

the " solemn troops and sweet society " of Chris- 
tian dreams. Unmindful of these, the saintly 
psyche looks to nothing beyond truth ; it asks 
no definite, still less personal, end to which this 
truth is to be applied • to find it is to love it, 
and to love it is enough. 

The doctrine I here broach, is no strange 
one to Christian thought. To be sure the exhorta- 
tion, " Save your soul from Hell," was almost the 
sole incentive to religion in the middle a^es, and 
is still the burden of most sermons. . But St. 
Paul was quickened with a holier fire, that con- 
sumed and swept away such a personal motive, 
when he wrote: " Yea, I could wish that I 
myself were cast out from Christ as accursed, 
for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen ac- 
cording to the flesh." 1 St. Augustine reveals 
the touch of the same inspiration in his passion- 
ate exclamation : 4 * Far, Lord, far from the 
heart of thy servant be it that I should rejoice 
in any joy whatever. The blessed life is the joy 
in truth alone." 2 And amid the paeans to ever- 
lasting life which fill the pages of iheDe Imita- 
tions Christi, the medieval monk saw some- 
thing yet greater, when he puts in the mouth of 
God the Father, the warning : " The wise lover 
thinks not of the gift, but of the love of the 

1 Romans, ch. ix., v. 3. 

2 " Beata quippe vita est gaudiura de veritate." Augustini 
Confessionum, Lib. x., caps, xxii., xxiii. 



WHA T RECOURSE ? 275 

giver. He rests not in the reward, but in Me, 
beyond all rewards." 1 The mystery of great 
godliness is, that he who has it is as one who 
seeking nothing yet finds all things, who asking 
naught for his own sake, neither in the life here 
nor yet hereafter, gains that alone which is of 
worth in either. 

Pressed by such considerations, the pious 
Schleiermacher threw down the glaive on the 
side of religion half a century ago when he 
wrote : " Life to come, as popularly conceived, 
is the last enemy which speculative criticism 
has to encounter, and, if possible, to overcome." 
The course he marked out, however, was not 
that which promises success. Recurring to the 
austere theses of Spinoza, he sought to bring 
them into accord with a religion of emotion. 
The result was a refined Pantheism with its us- 
ual deceptive solutions. 

What recourse is left? Where are we to 
look for the intellectual moment of religion in 
the future ? Let us review the situation. 

The religious sentiment has been shown to 
be the expression of unfulfilled desire, but this 
desire peculiar as dependent on unknown power. 
Material advantages do not gratify it, nor even 

1 " Prudens amator non tam donum amantis considerat, quam 
dantis amorem. Nobilis amator non quiescit in dono, sed in 
me super omne donum." Ue Imitatione Christi, Lib. iii., cap. vi. 



276 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

spiritual joy when regarded as a personal senti- 
ment. Preservation by and through relation 
with absolute intelligence has appeared to be 
the meaning of that "love of God " which alone 
yields it satisfaction. Even this is severed from 
its received doctrinal sense by the recognition of 
the speculative as above the numerical unity of 
that intelligence, and the limitation of personality 
which spiritual thought demands. The eternal 
laws of mind guarantee perpetuity to the extent 
they are obeyed — and no farther. They differ 
from the laws of force in that they convey a 
message which cannot be doubted concerning 
the purport of the order in nature, which is itself 
tc the will of God." That message in its appli- 
cation is the same which with more or less ar- 
ticulate utterance every religion speaks — Seek 
truth : do good. Faith in that message, confi- 
dence in and willing submission to that order, 
this is all the religious sentiment needs to bring 
forth its sweetest flowers, its richest fruits. 

Such is the ample and satisfying ground 
which remains for the religion of the future to 
build upon. It is a result long foreseen by the 
clearer minds of Christendom. One who more 
than any other deserves to be classed among 
these writes : " Kesignation to the will of God 
is the whole of piety. * # # Our resignation 
may be said to be perfect when we rest in his 
will as our end, as being itself most just and 



THE CLOSE. 277 

right and good. Neither is this at bottom 
anything more than faith, and honesty and 
fairness of mind ; in a more enlarged sense, in- 
deed, than these words are commonly used." * 

Goethe, who studied and reflected on religious 
questions more than is generally supposed, saw 
that in such a disposition of mind lie the native 
and strongest elements of religion. In one of 
his conversations with Chancellor Mliller, he ob- 
served : " Confidence and resignation, the sense 
of subjection to a higher will which rules the 
course of events but which we do not fully com- 
prehend, are the fundamental principles of every 
better religion." 2 

By the side of two such remarkable men, 
I might place the opinion of a third not less 
eminent than they— Blaise Pascal. In one part 
of his writings he sets forth the " marks of a 
true religion." Sifted from its physical ingre- 
dients, the faith he defines is one which rests 
on love and submission to God, and a clear 
recognition of the nature of man. 

Here I close these studies on the Eeligious 
Sentiment. They show it to be a late and 
probably a final development of mind. The 
intellect first reaches entire self-conciousness, 
the emotions first attain perfection of purpose, 

1 Fifteen Sermons by Joseph Butler, Lord Bishop of Durham. 
Sermon " On the love of God." 

2 Unterhaliungen, p. 131. 



278 THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

when guided by its highest manifestation. Man's 
history seems largely to have been a series of 
efforts to give it satisfaction. This will be pos- 
sible only when he rises to a practical apprecia- 
tion of the identity of truth, love and life. 



INDICES. 



I. AUTHORS QUOTED. 



Allen, H., 208. 

Anaxagoras, 106. 

Arnold, M., 249, 271. 

Aristotle, 105. 

Augustine, St., 20, 57, 93, 128, 191, 194, 

274. 
Bain, A., 9, 25, 52, 59, 87, 91, 244. 
Barlow, H.C., 201. 
Baxter, Richard, 60. 
Boehmer, H-, 7. 

Boole, Geo., 24, 44, 104, 105, 108, 111. 
Bunsen, 109, 251. 
Batler, Bishop, 60, 119, 276. 
Carlyle, 243. 
Catlow, J. P., 14, 64. 
Chateaubriand, 253. 
Comte, A., 11, 39, 128, 187, 194, 252. 
Condorcet, 267. 
Cory, J. P., 191. 
Coixlange, 245. 

Creuzer, 90, 106, 119, 127, 200, 212, 222. 
Cussans,210. 
Dante, 93. 
Darwin, C.,71, 88. 
Dick, 266. 
Dickson, J, T., 73. 
Etheridge, J. W.,190. 
Ferguson, 66. 

Ferrier, J. F., 20, 28, 43, 97. 
Feuchtersleben, 8, 54, 73, 
Feuerbach, 194. 
Fothergill, J. M., 61. 
Gibbon, 264. 



Goethe, 277. 

Gurney, J. J., 119. 

Hall, Bishop, 50, 77- 

Hamilton, Sir W., 24,29, 91, 95, 99,256. 

Helmholtz, 11, 14, 18, 22. 

Hegel, 29, 88. 

Herbert of Cherbury, 149, 260. 

Hobbes, 81. 

Hodgson, S. N"., 104, 126, 128, 134. 

Holtzmann, A., 259. 

Humboldt, A. von, 92. 

Humboldt, W- von, 6, 53, 67, 93, 112, 

113, 214, 246, 252. 
Hume, David, 81, 187, 219. 
Hunter, John, 9. 
Jacobi, 88. 

Jevons, W. S.,25,204. 
Kant, I., 25, 29, 32, 40, 91, 105, 194. 
Kolk, Schroeder van der, 72. 
Kitto, 74. 
Koppen, 37, 214. 
Law, Wm, 49, 87, 263, 272. 
Layeock, 75, 245. 
Lessing, 56, 254. 
Lewes, 187. 

Liddon, H. L., 129, 250. 
Mansel, 87, 88. 
Mauds! ey, H, 9,150. 
Mill, J. S-, 18, 87, 91, 97, 223. 
Mohammed, 71, 75, 114, 256. 
Morell, J. D., 88- 
Morley, J., 223. 
Miiller, 130. 



280 



INDICES. 



Miiller, Max, preface. 

Naville, E., 256, 2G3. 

Neander, A., 211. 

Novalis, 41, 49, 107, 124, 243. 

Oersted, 103. 

Oken, L., 7, 186. 

Paget, J., 63. 

Parker, Theo., 88. 

Pascal, 56. 

Plath, 129. 

Rousseau, J. J., 118. 

Saussure, Necker de, 229. 

Schlagintweit, E., 187. 

Schleiermacher, 88, 275. 

Schoolcraft, 63, 146. 

Schopenhauer, A., 11, 13, 51, 82, 91, 

269. 
Schwarz, 207. 



Senancourt de, 53, 180. 

Spinoza, 9, 14, 17, 41, 42, 51, 98, 104. 

Spencer, Herbert, 29, 39, 98, 104, 236, 

260. 
Swedenborg, 75. 
Steinthal, 101, 246. 
Tertullian, 241. 
Theophilus, 191. 
Thompson, 31. 
Todhunter, 25. 
Tyndall, 87, 132, 255. 
Yoltaire, 249. 
Westropp, 62. 
Wigan, A. L., 76. 
Williams, J., 76. 
Wordsworth, 41, 42, 180. 
Windelband, Dr., 101, 102, 108. 



II. SUBJECTS. 



Absolute, the, 102, 106. 

consciousness of, 161. 

Adam, as prophet of the moon, 170. 

Adjita, 178. 

Adonis, 165. - 

Aeon, 165, 166. 

.Agdistis, an epicene deity, 65. 

Ahura-Mazda, 113, 166, 184. 

Allah, 239. 

Amitabha, 175, 185. 

Analytic propositions, 32. 

Androgynous deities, 66. 

Animism, 163. 

Anointed, the, 176. 

Anya-Mainyus, 166, 184. 

Anthropomorphism, 193. 

Antinomies of Kant, 29. 

'Aphrodite, 65, 241. 

Apocalypse, the, 171- 

Apollo, 67, 241. 

Apperception, 156. 

Apprehension, 142. 

Arab idea of time, 165. 

Argumentum de appetitu, 231. 

Aronhiate, a Huron deity, 221. 

Arrenothele deities, 66. 

Art, religious, in Orient, 15 ; in 
Greece, 16 ; Christian, 209, 241 ; use- 
less and immoral, 244. 

Assyria, flood myth of, 169. 

Atbana6ius, his doctrine of the Trin- 
ity, 191. 



Atonement, doctrine of, 222. 

Avalokitesvara, 214. 

Aztecs, 80. 

Baghavad Gita, the, 189. 

Babylon, rites of, 74. 

Baldur, 176. 

Baptism, 138, 226. 

Beauty, the line of, 15, 211. 

the religion of, 241, 244, 245. 

Belief, its kinds, 141. 

Brahma, 65, 1G9. 

Brahmans, highest bliss of, 57 ; doc- 
trines, 168, 169. 

Breidablick, 176. 

Brutes, religious feeling in, 88. 

Buddha, 37, 57, 80, 120, 146, 156, 261, 
271. 

Buddhism, four truths of, 13; theories 
of prayer, 121, 150, 214 ; last day, 
169 ; myths, 175, 176 ; monotheism 
of, 187, 247, 256. 

Bull, as a symbol, 204. 

Cabala, Jehova in, 65. 

Canting arms, 212. 

Cause, not a reason, 38 ; in physical 
science, 91. 

Celibacy, Romish, 61. 

Cerebration, unconscious, 149. 

Chance, the idea of, 93. 

C hinese character for prayer, 129. 

Christ, see Jesus. 



INDICES. 



281 



Christianity, doctrines of, 190, 257, 
264, 274 ; symbol of, 203. 

Christmas tree, the, 215. 

Cockatrice, the, 77. 

Commonwealth, ideal of, 247« 

Consciousness, forms of, 17, 20. 

Confucius, doctrine, 122, sq. 

Continuity, law of, 11, 16 ; principle 
of, 95. 

Contradiction, law of, 27, 102. 

Correspondences, doctrine of, 217. 

Cosmical relations of man, 112, 268. 

Cotytto, 65. 

Cow, as a symbol, 204. 

Craoshang, 176. 

Creation, myth of, 166. 

Crescent, a phallic symbol, 62. 

Cross, a phallic symbol, 62 ; as phon- 
etic symbol, 210 ; variants of, 210. 

Cult, the, 199 sq. 

Culture, religion of, 243, 244, 253. 

Cybele, 65 ; priests of, 66, 219- 

Dactyli, the, 184. 

Darkness, terror of, 185. 

Day of Judgment, the, 172. 

Deity, see God. 

Design, argument from, 110. 

Desire, meaning of, 53. 

Deus, 185 ; triformis, 191. 

Deva, 185. 

Didactic rites, 225. 

Divination and prayer, 137. 

Dramatic rites, 226. 

Dual law of thought, 27, 102 ; division 
of the gods, 182, 183. 

Edda, mythology of, 175, 215. 

Eden, garden of, 175. 

Ego, the, 19. 

Egoism of religion, 272. 

Egyptians, doctrines of, 80, 222 ; pray- 
ers, 115 ; pyramids, 212 ; lotus of, 
214. 

Emotions, origin of, 10 ; exclude 
thought, 19 ; in religion, 49; of fear 
and hope, 50, 51 ; esthetic, 14. 

Entheasm, 148. 

Epochs of nature, 164 sq. 

Epicene deities, 66. 

Epilepsy and religious delusions, 75. 

Eros, 72. 

Fsculapius, emblem of, 200. 

Esthetic emotions, 14, 244. 



Ethics, grounds of, 266. 
Excluded middle, law of, 27, sqq. 

Expectant attention, 74, 129. 
Explanation, limits of, 38. 
Faith iii religion, 107. 
Fascination, 74. 

Fear, in religion, 50, sqq. 

Female principle in religion, 62, 183. 

Feridun, garden of, 175. 

Flood, myth of, 169, sq. 

Fingers, as gods, 184. 

Force, orders of, 133. 

Freedom, 105. 

Friends, sect of, see Quakers. 

Future life, doctrine of, 256, sq. 

Gallican confession, the, 138. 

Generative function in religion, 62, 
72, 73. 

Genius as inspiration, 149. 

Gnosis, the genuine, 74. 

Gnostic doctrines, 166. 

God, as father, 70 ; spouses of, 69, 71; 
mother of, 68 ; sexless, 71 ; earliest 
notions of, 78 ; incomprehensible, 
98 ; throne of, 167 ; love of, 73, 263, 
276. 

Gods, hierarchy of, 181; quantification 
of the, 186 ; of lightning, 207- 

Good, final victory of, 179. 

Grasshoppers, prayers against, 131. 

Greeks, art of, 16 ; doctrines of, 80 ; 
sophists, 96. 

Gudmund, King, 175. 

Hades, 186. 

Hare, the Great, 212. 

Hell, 186, 258, 274. 

Hercules, 72. 

Hermaphrodite deities, 66. 

Hesperides, the, 175. 

Hierarchy of the gods, 181. 

High places, worship of, 215, 216. 

Historic ideas. 232. 

Holy spirit, as inspiring, 138 ; brood- 
ing, 167. 

Hope, in religion, 51 sqq. 

Horae, the, 165. 

Humanity, the religion of, 194, 253. 

Ignorance, in relation to religion, 82. 

Illumination, 140. 

Immortality, doctrine of, 255. 

Indians, American, 125, 157- 

Insanity, religious, 76. 



282 



INDICES. 



Inspiration, 137. 

Intelligence, one in kind, 96 ; as the 

first cause, 106, 111. 
Irmin, pillars of, 215. 
Ischomachus, prayer of, 126. 
Israelites, the Messiah of, 176. 
Janus, an epicene deity, 65. 
Jehovah, 65, 156. 
Jemschid, king, 175. 
Jesus, face of, 67, 241 ; conception of, 

71; wounds of, 130 ; wisdom of, 144; 

as second Noah, 170 ; teachings, 178, 

260 ; prayer to, 187 ; execution of, 

203 ; death of, 222. 
Judaism, 187. 
Judgment, day of, 172. 
Kalpa, of Brahmans, 168. 
Knowledge, forms of, 21. 
Kosmos, the, 72, 144, 167. 
Lateau, Louise, 130. 
Law, defined, 40; of excluded middle, 

27 ; oldest, 248. 
Laws, the, of thought, 26, sq.; 101, sq. ; 

not restrictive, 105 ; as purposive, 

108. 
Light, as object of worship, 185. 
Lightning, the, in symbolic art, 207. 
Life, the perfect, 57. 
Lingam, the, 66. 
Lingayets, sect of, 66. 
Logic, applied, 23; abstract or formal, 

24 ; mathematical, 24 ; laws of, 101, 

sq. 
Logos, the, 42, 106. 
Lotus, as symbol, 213, sq. 
Love, as religious emotion, defined, 

58, 60, 262 ; of sex, 61, 63 ; law of, 

73; of God, 73, 263, 276. 
Ma, a goddess, 183. 
Maitreya, 176. 

Mamona, a Haitian deity, 68. 
Marchen, the, defined, 157. 
Marriage condemned, 60. 
Maypole, as a symbol, 215. 
Melitta, 65. 

Memory, physical basis of, 10; ances- 
tral, 75. 
Memorial, rites, 225. 
Messiah, the, 176. 
Millennium, the, 173, 268. 
Michabo, an Algonkin deity, 185. 
Mind, growth of, 7 ; extent of, 8, 271; 

as seat of law, 163. 



Miracles, 110, 130. 
Mithras, 65. 

Mohammed, notion of god, 71 ; in- 
spired, 146. 
Mohammedanism, 187, 224. 
Monotheism, origin of, 80, 81; 186, sq.. 
Moral government of the world, 112. 
Morality, independent of religion, 

dualism of deities, 182, 249, 266, 207. 
Mormonism, 61. 
Motion, first law of, 11 ; relation to 

time and space, 35 ; manifestations 

of, 77. 
Myth, the, defined, 156. 
Names, sacred, 156. 
Natural selection, in sensation, 10 ; 

in logic, 101. 
Nature, meaning of, 4, 39, 105; epochs 

of, 164. 
Nemqueteba, 240. 
Neo-Hegelian doctrine, 194. 
Nirvana, the, 13, 57, 257. 
Noah, 170. 
Nous, the, 106. 
Oaimes, 170. 
Obelisk as symbol, 215. 
Odainsakr, 175. 
Odin, 53, 259. 
Optimism, 112, 269. 
Order, in things, 90, sq. 
Osiris, 165. 
Pain, defined, 17. 
Parsees, doctrine of, 80, 166, 184. 
Pantheism, 188, 194, 247. 
Papas, a Phrygian god, 183. 
Paradise, lost and regained, myths 

of, 173, sq ; future, 257. 
Pentalpha, the, 212. 
Perfected commonwealth, idea of,247. 
Perfected individual, idea of, 239. 
Personal survival, idea of, 255. 
Pessimism, 11, 112, 269. 
Persians, ancient, 176. 
Personality, the, 19, 270. 
Phallus, worship of, 62, 66, 214, 216. 
Phanes, the orphic principle, 190. 
Philosophy of religion, defined, 3 ; of 

mythology, 159 ; of history, 232. 
Phrygian divinities, 183. 
Pillar worship, 215. 
Pleasure, defined, 14. 
Polarization,as a principle of thought, 

183. 



INDICES. 



283 



Porte Royale, miracles of, 131. 

Postulates of religion, 89. 

Prayer, 117, sq. 

Progression of development, 109. 

Protestantism, 128, 139, 250. 

Protogonus, 167. 

Psyche, and love, 72. 

Pythagoras, his thoughts on number, 

189. 
Quakers, sect of, 76, 115, 138, 147. 
Quantification of the predicate, 22 ; of 

the gods, 186. 
Quetzalcoatl, 212. 
Reason in religion, 106, 107 ; drawn 

from sight, 186. 
Rebus in symbolism, 212. 
Pegin, as name of gods, 90. 
Relative, the, 106. 
Religion, science of, 3 ; philosophy 

of, 3 ; personal factor of, 81 ; not 

concerned with phenomena, 110. 
Reproductive function in religion, 

62. 
Res per accidens, 182. 
Resignation, doctrine of, 128, 135. 
Revelation, marks of, 149- 
Rig Veda, the, 125. 
Rite, the, 217, seq. 
Roland, pillars of, 215, 
Roman Catholics, 76, 138, 141,187, 250. 
Sabians, myths of, 170. 
Sacraments, 227. 

Sacrifice, idea in, 218 ; vicarious, 22*. 
Saga, the, defined, 157. 
Saint Brigida, 146. 
Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, 146. 
Sakyamuni, see Buddha. 
Saturnian Era, the, 175. 
Science of Religion, 3 ; as knowledge 

of system, 92 ; of mythology, 158. 
Secularization of symbols, 204. 
Sensation, defined, 9 ; excludes 

thought, 19 ; of pain and pleasure, 

10. 
Sentiment, the religious, 3; emotional 

elements of, 79; rational postulates 

of, 87 ; religion of, 250, 
Serpent, as emblem and symbol, 200, 

206, 207- 
Sev, an Egyptian deity, 165. 
Sex, love of, 61, 63 ; in nature, 71, 72, 

216. 
Shekinah, the, 66. 



Siddartha, a name of Buddha, 121. 

Similars, law of, 204. 

Sin, sense of, 225. 

Sight, as the light-sense, 186. 

Siva, worship of, 66, 214- 

Soul, the, 19, 271. 

Specific performance in rites, 218, sq. 

Stigmata, the, 130. 

Sufficient reason, principle of, 91. 

Sukhavati, 175. 

Supernatural, defined, 4 ; its relation 

to symbols, 205. 
Swedenborg, 75, 217. 
Symbol, the phonetic, 200 ; origin of, 

202 ; related and coincident, 203. 
Symbolism, defined, 200. 
Synthesis of contraries, 37. 
Synthetic propositions, 32. 
Tathagata, a name of Buddha, 121. 
Tau, the Egyptian, 210. 
Theology, 4. 

Thor, hammer of, 210, 239. 
Thought, as a function, 17 ; laws of, 

26, 101, sq.; as purposive, 108. 
Tien, Mongolian deity, 185, 216. 
Time, not a force, 11 ; but believed to 

be one, 165. 
Tlapallan, 175. 
Tree worship, 215. 

Triads, the Celtic, 190 ; Platonic, 191. 
Triangle, the equilateral, 212. 
Trinity, the doctrine of, 191 ; symbol 

of, 212. 
Triplicate relation of numbers, 190. 
Tri theism, of Christianity, 190- 
Truth, what is, 21 ; eternal, 41 ; as 

answer to prayer, 137. 
Tulan, 175. 

Unconditioned, the, 29, 34, 37, 98, 100. 
Uniformity of sequence, as cause, 91, 

92. 
Unknowable, the, 29, 34, 99, 100. 
Valkyria, the, 53. 
Valhalla, 259. 
Yaruna, an Aryan god, 125- 
Yendidad, the, 175. 
Venereal sense, the, 64. 
Vicarious sacrifice, theory of, 222. 
Virginity, sacredness of, 69. 
Virgin Mother, the, 68. 
Volition, see Will. 
Voluspa, the, 171. 
Wabose, Catherine, 146. 



284 



INDICES. 



"Water, as the primitive substance, 

167. 
Will, the, 16 ; of God, 38, 42 ; as a 

cause, 00. 
"Wish, the religious, 52 ; definition of, 

79. 
World, moral government of, 112 ; 

creation and changes, 161 ; light of 

the, 185. 



Xisuthrus, 170. 
Year, the Great, 169. 
Yima, reign of, 175. 
Ynglyngasaga, the, 218. 
Yocauna, a Haitian deity, 
Zarathustra, 80, 114. 
Zeruana akerana, 166. 
Zweckgesetze, 108. 



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